Minecraft wiki entry for Beginner%27s_guide, associated text: As with your health bar, you start with a full hunger bar, with 10 icons ("shanks") representing 20 hunger points. After you have been moving around (and perhaps fighting) for a while, the hunger bar begins rippling and start decreasing. If the hunger bar drops below 90% ( × 9), you cannot regenerate health, and if it gets to 30% (), you can't sprint. If the hunger bar goes down to empty, you begin losing health. Unless you are in Hard mode (and a beginning player shouldn't be), you can't actually starve to death, but your health declines 1 health point () in Normal mode, or half the health bar ( in Easy mode), which leaves you quite vulnerable. If you are playing in Peaceful mode, you do not have to deal with hunger at all.