How to Eat Food

This Minecraft tutorial explains how to eat food with screenshots and step-by-step instructions.

In Survival mode, food will replenish your health. It is not necessary to eat food in Creative mode, since you have unlimited resources. Let's explore how to eat food.

## Edible Items

These are some of the foods that you can eat in Minecraft:

**TIP:** When you eat food, it will replenish your food bar or health bar, depending on your version of Minecraft. Some foods give you status effects that are positive, while other foods can cause you harmful effects.

**WARNING:** So, be careful what you eat!

## How to Eat Food

Quite often, you will find yourself low on health and you need to replenish your health by eating food.

In this example, we will demonstrate how to eat food by eating a bowl of rabbit stew.

We have added rabbit stew to our inventory and selected it in our hotbar. If you don't have food in your inventory, you can quickly make some with a crafting recipe for food.

The game control to eat food depends on the version of Minecraft:

* For Java Edition (PC/Mac), right click and hold.
* For Pocket Edition (PE), you tap and hold.
* For Xbox 360 and Xbox One, press and hold the LT button on the Xbox controller.
* For PS3 and PS4, press and hold the L2 button on the PS controller.
* For Wii U, press and hold the ZL button on the gamepad.
* For Nintendo Switch, press and hold the ZL button on the controller.
* For Windows 10 Edition, right click and hold.
* For Education Edition, right click and hold.

You should now see yourself eating. Since we are eating rabbit stew, we will see an empty bowl left in our hotbar when we are done eating.

Now that you have consumed the food, you should see your food bar increase and then your health bar will increase slowly, one point at a time. Or if you don't have a food bar, you will just see your hearts restored.

## How to Eat Cake

Although cake is a food that is eaten to replenish your health, it's consumed a bit differently than other foods in Minecraft. A cake is eaten one slice at a time until it's all gone. Let's look at an example of how to eat a cake in the game.

In this example, we have added a cake to our inventory and selected it in our hotbar.

Now the first thing you need to do is put the cake down on the ground. This must be done before you can eat any of the cake.

The game control to place the cake down depends on the version of Minecraft:

* For Java Edition (PC/Mac), right click on the block.
* For Pocket Edition (PE), you tap on the block.
* For Xbox 360 and Xbox One, press the LT button on the Xbox controller.
* For PS3 and PS4, press the L2 button on the PS controller.
* For Wii U, press the ZL button on the gamepad.
* For Nintendo Switch, press the ZL button on the controller.
* For Windows 10 Edition, right click on the block.
* For Education Edition, right click on the block.

Now that the cake has been set down, you can eat a slice of cake at a time to replenish your health. The game control to eat a slice of cake depends on the version of Minecraft:

* For Java Edition (PC/Mac), right click on the cake.
* For Pocket Edition (PE), you tap on the cake.
* For Xbox 360 and Xbox One, press the LT button on the Xbox controller.
* For PS3 and PS4, press the L2 button on the PS controller.
* For Wii U, press the ZL button on the gamepad.
* For Nintendo Switch, press the ZL button on the controller.
* For Windows 10 Edition, right click on the cake.
* For Education Edition, right click on the cake.

You should now see a slice of the cake disappear.

Now that you have eaten a piece of cake, you should see your food bar increase and then your health bar will increase slowly, one point at a time. Or if you don't have a food bar, you will just see hearts restored.

Congratulations, you just learned how to eat food (including cake) in Minecraft.