Summary
Food is a vital resource inMinecraft. Without food, players in Survival Mode will be unable to run, and when empty, they will slowly lose hearts and starve. Luckily, there are many different food sources inMinecraft, some options are more animal or eco-friendly than others, meaning every type of player can eat the best foods in the game.
The best food isn’t based on the most flavorsome, or therarest foods inMinecraft, but instead the easiest to obtain, mixed with the food that will fill the most hunger bars and for the longest time. There are plenty of food sources inMinecraft, and some aren’t worth the effort, whereas others are essential.
Updated on March 27th, 2025, by Chris Harkin:Although there have not been many major updates to Minecraft lately, the game already hosts such an incredible wealth of items, animals, and options to feast upon various things that players will never run out of things to do in their worlds, realms and servers. Minecraft may add more slowly nowadays, but it will likely be several more decades before the game slows down, and with the release of A Minecraft Movie, players will continue to flock back to the game in numbers to see what else they can do in this game. If any other edible items are added to the game in future updates, then this comprehensive list will continue to be updated.
28Spider Eye
Restores 2 Food Points, And Poisons The Consumer
By far the worst food source inMinecraftis the spider eye. If players come across this thing, they shouldn’t be tempted to eat it, even when in desperate need of food, for the spider eye will poison the player for 5 seconds. This poison effect can be pretty lethal, and who would even look at the eye of a spider and think of a tasty snack?
Whilst spider eyes are terrible for consumption, they can be used to make potions with brewing stands, so it’s best to collect the spider eyes and ferment them with sugar and brown mushrooms rather than feasting on them.
27Rotten Flesh
Restores 4 Food Points, But Has An 80% Chance to Give Hunger For 30 Seconds
Another food source that players are surely going to have a high amount of will be rotten flesh. Despite the look of dried jerky, players should try to avoid rotten flesh, but sometimes it can be the only source of food when venturing deep within caves with no way out. Players might have to put aside their morals and consume the flesh of the undead to save themselves but do try and avoid it for future playthroughs.
Whilst there are no dire effects of consuming rotten flesh, players do have an 80% chance of getting the Hunger debuff, which will cause the hunger bar to drain a lot faster than normal. Rotten flesh should be used in desperate times, as filling the hunger bar to regain hearts is important, but rotten flesh does a good job at draining said hunger bar shortly after.
26Poisonous Potato
Restores 1 Food Point, 60% Chance To Poison
Although it isn’t the most useful of food items, the poisonous potato is an option inMinecraft. Moreover, it can be used for several amusing effects, like when an update for April Fool’s Day led to them being everywhere. The poisonous potato is an accidental side effect when harvesting potato crops, coming out along with several regular potatoes from each crop.
The poisonous potato does heal a food point and has saturation 1.2, but it isn’t worth eating most of the time, since it also comes with a more than likely chance of poisoning the consumer. This usually means that this is a food item better thrown out and it is fairly useless unless the player is really desperate.
25Dried Kelp
Restores 1 Food Point
A fast-eaten food source, dried kelp can aid players who need a quick and resourceful snack, but it’s definitely not going to benefit them in the long run. The saturation restored isn’t nearly enough to be sustainable, but luckily, players can easily acquire multiple stacks of 64 for this food source, and there’s always the advantage of it never being in short supply, and always granting XP.
Dried kelp must be cooked in a furnace, smoker, or campfire, and doing so will provide 6.4 experience points per stack of dried kelp. Players can also create blocks of the stuff, ensuring that they will never run out of the edible material. Even better still, the food is eaten twice as fast as other food items, meaning it’s quick and effective, to those who have the stacks.
24Beetroot
Beetroots aren’t only useful for creating red dye, as hungry players can eat them to restore just one measly food point. Whilst this is by no means impressive, beetroot is an easy item to farm, thanks to the fact thatseemingly every village has themin the form of beetroot seeds, and they are a common find in chests found in mineshafts and other sources.
Beetroots will not restore the best level of food points and hunger saturation, but being so readily available as a resource is definitely going to help players who don’t have a cow farm at the ready, or simply have more morals inMinecraftto do such a thing.
23Cookies
Restores 2 Food Points
Cookies are a classic staple of Minecraft foods which can be made, but hardly ever are because they aren’t worth the effort. Cookies give back 2 food points, which isn’t a lot, and players will not only need to be consistently growing wheat to make them, but cocoa beans as well, which only grow in jungles.
Players can seek out the ingredients and grow their own to have a consistent supply of cookies, but when so many other foods are better than them, these are one of the few food items in Minecraft with no side effects that players generally just won’t bother with.
22Glow Berries
Although they are difficult to find and only grow underground, glow berries are a fun, different addition toMinecraftcoming from the Lush Caves update. Glow berries aren’t the very best food, but they are an important one to keep in mind since there isn’t often a lot of food available deep underground.
If players suddenly realize that they’ve run out of food options, these berries that give 2 food points back each can be a major commodity. They’re also very useful for players looking to build an underground base, as not a lot of food can be made consistently available beneath the surface.
21Melon Slice
Upon farming or harvesting a melon, players will earn 3 to 7 melon slices that can be eaten. Whilst this fruit may be sweet and delicious, it’s not the best food item inMinecraft, and players will see themselves consume an entire stack of 64 melon slices rather quickly since the saturation restored is a measly 1.2.
Melons are fun to farm, as they look aesthetically pleasing in certain bases, and players can carry a stack of melons, meaning they can place one, harvest it, and find a near-infinite source of melon slices since a stack of melons could provide a potential of 448 melon slices. However, it’s pretty impractical to carry that many.
20Sweet Berries
Finding sweet berries naturally in taiga biomes, players are not going to have to look far, as they are rather common within. Collecting sweet berries is always a good idea, just be careful not to step into them, as the thorny bush will cause some damage to players. However, once acquired, players will have more berries than they know what to do with, which can then be planted in the ground for more.
Sweet berry bushes grow rather quickly, and they can be used as a line of defense against zombies, a nice decoration outside, or more importantly, as a stackable and always-growing resource that players can keep on their person. It might not be the best, but it’s certainly effective andeasy to acquire.
19Chorus Fruit
Restores 4 Food Points, Teleports The Player
The Chorus Fruit can be found in abundance thanks to exploring The End after the defeat of the Ender Dragon. However, traversing here in itself is an endgame activity, and perhaps one that players do not want to venture towards just to gain some fruit. However, the Chorus Fruit does randomly teleport players, which could end up saving their lives.
On top of the fact that players can teleport freely without the damaging effects of an Ender Pearl, the Chorus Fruit heals for a bundle of Hunger Points, and thecommon resource in The Endmeans players can carry boundless amounts of this fruit from another dimension.
