Minecraft wiki entry for Food, associated text: A player's current saturation level can never exceed their current hunger level. A player at a hunger level of 5, for example, can be at a maximum of 5 saturation. Food always restores hunger (raising the saturation limit) before supplying saturation. The most efficient use of food is to eat low-nourishment food (see below) to fill the hunger bar, followed by a highly nourishing food to fill saturation. While a few hunger points may be wasted when eating nourishing food when nearly full, eating nourishing foods on a low hunger bar wastes even more points of saturation. Maximizing saturation increases the length of time (and/or the amount of damage healed) before the player needs to eat again.