Minecraft wiki entry for Hunger_management, associated text: Food are a specific type of items that can be eaten by pressing the "use" button, when your hunger bar is not at maximum. Food restores both the hunger bar and saturation, with different foods filling different amounts of each. You can obtain food through crafting, trading, searching naturally generated chests, farming, and killing mobs. Many foods can be cooked (smelted) for better effect. Burning mobs is an easier method to obtain meat without the need of cooking.