Minecraft wiki entry for The_second_day, associated text: Besides the visible hunger bar, you also have an invisible hunger bar, called "saturation". When the game starts, the hunger bar is full, but you have only 5 saturation points. Like your health bar and hunger bar, this maxes out at 20 points (each "shank" of the visible bar represents two points), although it is never higher than your hunger level. Whenever you do something that would make you hungry, the saturation gets used up first, which provides extra time before you get hungry again. Most foods provide saturation as well as filling the visible bar, and the "better" foods provide more saturation per hunger point restored. The general rule is that, apart from the golden foods, cooked beef and cooked porkchops are the best, followed by other cooked meats (or fish), bread, and vegetables. Cooked foods are always better than their uncooked counterparts.