The History Of Minecraft Food!

---

---

In Minecraft, we know that food is an essential part of surviving. Some foods are more desired than other foods because of their effectiveness on our hunger. For example, steak is far better than apples because it regenerates more food points and restores more saturation. And we're always searching for the coveted Golden Apple. But did you know that food wasn't always for solving the players hunger in Minecraft? Well, today we learn about that in the History of Minecraft Food.

The first Minecraft food item was actually added before it could even be eaten. In the Classic 0.0.20a version of Minecraft, from June of 2009, red and brown mushrooms were added to the game. These mushrooms were purely decorative items and could be placed on any block except for other mushrooms. Mushrooms became edible in the 0.24 Survival Test version of Classic Minecraft on September 1st of 2009. Pigs actually began dropping mushrooms in the 0.25 Survival Test version. At this time, Brown mushrooms gave 2 1/2 hearts... and red mushrooms caused 1 1/2 hearts of damage to the players health. That's right, food was actually used to restore health, rather than hunger at this point. Notch explained this on June 14th of 2009 when talking about his visions of Minecraft Survival Mode. He said: "Monsters will hurt you and take away from your health. The only way to regain health is to eat food. You get food from either hunting or from farming."

The Java Indev versions, from December of 2009 to February of 2010, brought significant changes to food in Minecraft. Mushrooms no longer were the only food source... In fact, they are actually no longer edible because mushroom stew was added to the game in the 0.31 Indev version. This same version added apples to the game! Apples could restore 2 hearts and were intended to replace mushrooms. Also added in the Indev versions were wheat, bread, and pork chops. Bread was originally crated by using 6 wheat... before being changed on February 23rd of 2010 to just 3 wheat. Pigs would drop raw pork chops which could be cooked into cooked porkchops with the newly added furnace block!

The Java Infdev version of Minecraft brought just one food item to the game.. but it's a big one. Golden apples were added to Minecraft on February 27th of 2010. They restored 10 hearts of health and could be crafted with 8 blocks of gold. This made it the best food in the game... and most valuable food in the game. Later in the Infdev versions, golden apples could rarely be found in dungeons.

The alpha versions of Minecraft brought us Milk, Eggs, Pumpkins, and fish! Milk was added in the alpha 1.0.8 version from July of 2010 through inventory editing but it was not obtainable naturally by players until the 1.0.11 version when players could get it by milking a cow with an empty bucket. In Alpha Minecraft, milk buckets were not drinkable and could be emptied. At this time, chickens did not drop raw chicken and eggs had no actual use. Pumpkins generated in many of the newly added biomes and could be crafted into jack-o-lanterns but pumpkin seeds were not yet added. Fish were obtainable through the newly added fishing feature.

The Minecraft Beta versions added sugar, cake, cookies, melon blocks, beef, chicken, and rotten flesh. In the beta 1.0 version, eggs became throw-able at the request of Wyld on Twitter. In the beta 1.2 version on January 13th of 2011, sugar and cake were added to the game. Sugar was crafted using sugar cane which had been in the game since alpha. Notch actually confirmed cake would be added to the game prior to this in November of 2010. Cake was created using milk, sugar, eggs, and wheat. Cake could heal 9 total hearts when eaten. This same version actually added cocoa beans to the game, too... but they were only accessible through inventory editors. In Beta 1.4, cocoa beans were officially added to the game... along with cookies. At this time, cookies were the only stack-able food item in the game, with 8 cookies per stack. In the 1.2_01 Beta version, squids could be milked by right-clicking on their mouth if part of their body was exposed to air.. but this was soon removed in Beta 1.14.

In Pre-release version 1.8 on September 9th of 2011 food now began stacking to 64 in the inventory, except for cake, mushroom stew, and milk. In this same version also saw the biggest update to food in Minecraft history. Melons, melon seeds, and pumpkin seeds were all introduced to the game. Chickens began dropping raw chicken which could be cooked into cooked chicken in the furnace. Raw beef started being dropped by cows, and could be smelted into steak. Steak took the texture of cooked pork chops in this version.. and cooked pork chops got a new texture. Zombies and zombie pigman began dropping rotten flesh instead of feathers and cooked pork chops. Mushrooms got two new sources, with the huge mushrooms, and mooshrooms being added to the game. Mooshrooms cannot be milked like regular cows but can rather produce mushroom stew with a bowl. They drop beef when killed just like regular cows. Rather than food just disappearing from the players hand, an eating animation was added to the game. Finally, the hunger bar was officially added to the game. Food no longer restored health directly but rather it restored hunger. Due to the hunger bar addition, golden apples now restored 10 hunger points, rather than 20 health points but it also gave regeneration for 30 seconds.

In the Beta 1.9 pre-release version 2 of the game from September 29 of 2011, milk could be used to get rid of potion effects or food poisoning, mushrooms could now be obtained from the mushroom island biome, and spiders began dropping eyes. Spider eyes can be eaten but also give 2 hearts of damage to the player with a poison effect. 

In the 1.1 release of the game from January of 2012, golden apples were now made with gold nuggets rather than blocks of gold and would restore 4 food points and give 4 second of regeneration. 

In Minecraft 1.2.5, rotten flesh no longer caused food poisoning when eaten while playing in the peaceful difficulty.

In the 1.3.1 version of Minecraft, enchanted golden apples were officially added to Minecraft. This version of golden apple acted like the original golden apples prior to the 1.1 changes by being crafted with 8 gold blocks and having regeneration IV for 30 seconds. However, they also gave player resistance and fire resistance for 5 minutes. Additionally in this version, cocoa pods were added and cocoa beans were now a crop which made every food item a renewable resource. Jeb had previously revealed cocoa pods as a new feature with a screenshot on Twitter.

In the 1.4.2 version of Minecraft, from October of 2012, potatoes and carrots were added to the game. They were obtainable as farmed items, being found in villages, or as a rare drop from zombies. Potatoes could be cooked into baked potatoes and when harvested, they may give 0-2 poisonous potatoes which gave the player the poison effect. Carrots could be crafted into golden carrots. Golden carrots can be used to brew a night vision potion and has the highest points of any food in the game making them a valuable food! Additionally in 1.4.2, pumpkin pies were added to the game, being created by a pumpkin, sugar, and egg. The textures of bread, raw chicken, cooked chicken, raw beef, steak, raw pork chops, cooked pork chops, and apples had the dark outline removed from it in this version.

In Minecraft 1.6.1, on July 1st of 2013, Hunger was updated. Natural health regeneration now costs hunger point and saturation points by draining three points of health and saturation for ever regenerated health point. Additionally, golden apples can now be crafted using 8 gold ingots rather than 8 gold nuggets!

In October of 2013, Minecraft brought us The Update that Changed the World, with 1.7.2. This update saw some changes to fishing and brought us three new kind of fish: clown fish, puffer fish, and salmon. Clown fish could not be cooked and restored 1 food point or 1/2 a nugget on the hunger bar. Raw salmon resotred 2 health points, or one full nugget. This could be turned into cooked salmon and it restored 6 health points, or 3 nuggets. And finally, puffer fish restores 1 health point, and when eaten it inflicts poison 4 for 1 minute, hunger 3 for 15 seconds, and nausea for 15 seconds. It could also be used to brew a water breathing potion. Additionally in this version, the cost of sprint jumping is now 0.8 as opposed to 0.2 which means that constant sprint jumping is no longer a viable means of long-distance traveling in many situations.

The Bountiful Update of 1.8, from September of 2014, saw the first and only changes to carrots and potatoes since they were added. Baked potatoes now restored 5 hunger points, or 2 and a half nuggets, rather than 6 hunger points or 3 nuggets. Carrots restored 3 health points, or 1 and a half nuggets rather than 4 and 2 respectively. Additionally, mutton was added into Minecraft in 1.8. One or two pieces of raw mutton is dropped when an adult sheep is killed. When smelted into cooked mutton, it restores 6 hunger points, or 3 hunger bar nuggets, and 9.6 hunger saturation. And finally, Minecraft 1.8 also introduced us to rabbits. Raw rabbit and cooked rabbit can be eaten with cooked rabbit restoring 6 saturation and 5 hunger points. But it can also be created into Rabbit stew with cooked rabbit, a mushroom, a carrot, and baked potato, and a bowl. Rabbit stew restores 10 food points, or 5 nuggets, and 12 saturation. 

The combat update of 1.9, from February of 2016, saw a revamped End dimension. With this revamped dimension, chorus fruit was added to the game. This item can be obtained by breaking chorus plant blocks and restored 2 hunger nuggets and 2.4 hunger saturation. It also causes a player to teleport when it is eaten. Chorus fruit can be smelted into popped chorus fruit which is then used to craft end rods and purpur blocks. Beetroot was also added into this version as an update to village farms. Beetroot can be eaten on it's own or crafted into beetroot soup which restores more health and saturation. Beetroot can also be used to create red dye. This version brought some changes to health that is directly related to the players hunger, too with health regenerating faster when the saturation of a player is not empty. This means, the saturation level of foods eaten in Minecraft is even more important than ever! And finally, enchanted golden apples now became uncraftable and no longer a renewable resource.

In the July 18th, 2018 Aquatic Update of Minecraft 1.13, kelp was added into the game. Kelp could be cooked into dried kelp which is an edible item. Dried kelp only restores .6 hunger saturation and just a half nugget on the hunger bar making it a not-so-great food item. However, it can also be crafted into a dried kelp block. This version also saw fish being added to the game as mobs. As a result, fish were renamed to cod and got a new texture for both raw and cooked cod. 

The April 2019 Village & Pillage update of Minecraft 1.14, saw the suspicious stew and sweet berries added into the game. Suspicious stew is crafted using a red mushroom, brown mushroom, bowl, and any flower. It can also be found in shipwrecks or from villagers. The stew grants a random effect of either blindness, jump boost, night vision, poison, saturation, or weakness. It's also the only food item in Minecraft that cannot be obtained in the creative inventory. When a mooshrom is struck by lighting, it now creates a brown mooshroom... which gives the player suspicious stew when it is milked with a bowl after being given a flower. Sweet berries can be obtained from sweet berry bushes which are a plantable item and are found in the taiga variant biomes. When eaten, sweet berries can restore 2 hunger points, or 1 full food bar nugget. This 1.14 update also added the composter to the game which coverts food and plant materials into bone meal and serves as a villager's job site block. Finally, this update also saw a change to textures to many of the items in Minecraft which includes most of the food items.

Finally, in the 1.15 version of Minecraft from December of 2019, bees were introduced to game. These bees could now pollinate crops in the game. With bees also came the honey bottle which can be crafted with 4 bottles and a block of honey. Drinking the bottle of honey restores 3 nuggets on the food bar and 1.2 saturation. It also removes the poison effect of players without removing any other effect the player may have but they take 25% longer than eating other food. Honey bottles can be drunk even when the hunger bar is full. Also in Minecraft 1.15, all foods can now be consumed in creative mode... and yes, that includes cake. And that's where we are in today's Java Edition!

There are plenty of other fun facts revolving around food that I didn't mention here. I really wanted to focus on the major changes made to food that we've seen in the game. Feel free to share any fun facts in the comment section that you want to share with others. But that's where I'm going to leave you with the history of Minecraft food. We'll see what the future holds. Maybe some new food items will be introduced in future updates of Minecraft.

---

---