Food Calculator: Hunger and Saturation
Enter your current hunger, pick a food and see how many to eat and what happens to your hunger bar and saturation.
How we calculate
Every food has two numbers. Hunger points are how much it restores on the 20-point bar (one drumstick equals 2). Saturation is a hidden reserve: while it lasts, the hunger bar does not drop. Both numbers for all 40 foods come from the game’s own 26.3 data.
When you eat, the game adds hunger first, capped at 20, then saturation, capped at your new hunger level. That is why the calculator also shows what gets “burned” against the cap: eating a golden carrot with an almost full bar wastes most of its saturation.
You cannot eat with a full bar, except for golden and enchanted golden apples, chorus fruit, honey bottles and suspicious stew. Effects (Hunger from rotten flesh, poison from pufferfish and so on) also come from the game data, including their chance to trigger. Suspicious stew’s effect depends on the flower and is not shown here.
Sources
checked 29 September 2026
Questions and answers
What is the best food in Minecraft?
It depends on your goal. Golden carrots give the most saturation (14.4), rabbit stew restores the most hunger per item (10), and steak and cooked porkchop give 8 hunger and 12.8 saturation while being easy to farm. Sort the table by the column you care about.
What is saturation for?
It is a hidden reserve that is used up before your hunger bar. While you have saturation, drumsticks do not disappear. It can never exceed your current hunger level, so high-saturation foods are best eaten when the bar is already full or nearly full.
Why does the calculator say some saturation was “burned”?
Saturation cannot go above your hunger level. If you eat something nourishing with an almost full bar, most of its saturation is simply lost. It is better to top up hunger with basic food first and then eat something with high saturation.
Which game version are these numbers for?
Java Edition 26.3: hunger, saturation and effects come from that version’s own game data. The calculator does not cover Bedrock Edition.
Unofficial tool. Not affiliated with the developers or publishers of Minecraft.