Food

"What deliciousness shall you yield?"

- Warly

Food can be obtained by foraging, trapping, farming or hunting Animals and Monsters. Food refills Hunger and may restore some Health and Sanity, depending on the quality of the food eaten. Eating some foods, such as Monster Meat or Durians, can damage the player's health instead of restoring it. Some foods, such as raw Meat or Morsel, will damage a player's sanity if eaten. Mushrooms have varying effects on Health and Sanity depending on their color. Some special food items, such as Glow Berry, have additional effects when eaten.

Almost all raw food can be Cooked on a Campfire to increase the amount of Health/Hunger/Sanity restored or reduce (even remove) Health/Sanity penalties from eating it. Some raw food items, most notably Meats, can be dried on a Drying Rack to produce long lasting food items with increased Health/Hunger/Sanity values. Additionally, a Crock Pot can be used for making foods that have additional benefits.

Food items also have other uses than eating them directly. Meat can be used as bait for carnivores, for the recruitment of Pigs, and as an offering to the Pig King for Gold Nuggets. A renewable way to gain Eggs is by giving meats to birds housed in Bird Cages. Meat is also a requirement to construct the Meat Effigy. Bunnymen can be befriended using Carrots and will become hostile if meat is in the player's inventory. Vegetables and Fruits can be used as bait for herbivores and given to Pigs to obtain Manure. Seeds can be used to bait Bird Traps.

Being of the most important items in the game, (and part of the game's namesake, to not starve) food is typically very valuable in any world; however, given the layouts of different maps and what spawns in them, food availability can vary from being abundant, to dangerously short. Food is affected by the seasons, which likely encourages the player to take advantages of seasonal diets and also take advantages of the food's shelf life.

With the introduction of Overheating mechanic in the Reign of Giants DLC (and carried over to Don't Starve Together and Shipwrecked DLC), some foods are classified as hot or cold, providing an alternative way to combat Freezing and Overheating, respectively.


 * For Information on Food values and Priority, see the Crock Pot page.

Categories
There are several Food categories:


 * Meats — Meats General.png
 * Fishes — Fishes General.png
 * Vegetables — Vegetables General.png
 * Fruits — Fruits Crock Pot.png
 * Eggs — Eggs_Crock_Pot.png
 * Crock Pot meals — Crock Pot Foods.png
 * Other — [[File:Other Food.png]]

Food Types

 * HealthMeter.png Health HungerMeter.png Hunger SanityMeter.png Sanity Rot.png Perish Time (days) Crock Pot.png Crock Pot Food Values

Perish Times
Most Food has a Perish Time, eventually turning into Rot.


 * Any kind of cooked meat lasts longer than any raw meat, but any kind of raw vegetable lasts longer than any cooked vegetable. The exceptions are Popcorn, which lasts longer than raw Corn; Mushrooms, which last the same amount of time whether cooked or raw; and Seaweed in Shipwrecked last longer when cooked.
 * Food dropped on the ground will perish at a rate of 1.5, while keeping it in the Ice Box will reduce the rate to 0.5. Additionally, during Winter and when world temperature is below 0°, the food base perish rate is multiplied by 0.75 instead of 1. I.e. during winter, when temperature is below 0°, food in the Ice Box will spoil at 0.5 × 0.75 = 0.375 rate. In Reign of Giants`s Summer and Shipwrecked`s Dry Season, the food spoils at the rate of 1.25.
 * Soggy food spoils 30% faster.
 * The stale and spoiled effects do not apply when eaten by WX-78.
 * The effects of eating stale or spoiled food are worse when playing as Wickerbottom. Stale food will only give 1/3 of the hunger and 1/4 of health. Spoiled food will restore only 1/6 of the hunger. The rest of the values is the same as other characters.
 * Cooking Food on fire or in Crock Pot halves the spoiled amount of the Food (e.g. if it were at 80% freshness when raw, it would change to 90% freshness after being cooked).
 * Tallbird Eggs, Mandrakes (raw and cooked), the Deerclops Eyeball, Guardian's Horn, (Glommer's Goop Reign of Giants icon.png) and ("Ballphin Free" Tuna Shipwrecked icon.png, which gives one Fish Steak when used) are the only Food items which don't spoil (despite Honey being the only food in real life that does not spoil).
 * Food cooked in the Crock Pot and meat dried on the Drying Rack do not begin to spoil until picked up. This was changed in the Reign of Giants DLC.

Food Temperature
A food with a defined temperature effect will increase/decrease the player's perceived temperature by 40°, for varying lengths of time. This effect is not directly related to, or affected by the food's freshness.

Cold foods preserve their full effect until they rot.

Hot foods, however, will cool off over time (shortening the duration of the increased temperature effect, rather than decreasing in temperature) after being made (all hot foods are Crock Pot dishes). Hot foods will cool off twice as fast if put inside a functioning Ice Box. This cool-off increase does not happen inside other spoilage-reducing containers (Snow Chester, Insulated Pack, Sea Sack and Chef Pouch). Spoilage-eliminating containers, like the Bundling Wrap, will preserve the temperature effect indefinitely, just like they preserve freshness.

Tips

 * In order to maximize the benefits of a food item, the time when to cook it can be broke down in 3, taking into account the difference of spoil rate of the Cooked version VS the Raw version: 1) Less than twice as long; 2) Twice as long; and 3) More than twice as long. 1) If it to take less than twice as long to spoil then it should be cooked as late as possible. 2) If it takes exactly twice as long, then it does not matter when it is cooked. 3) If more, it should be cooked as early as possible.
 * When cooking sanity-restoring food, one should be wary of their freshness, as when they turn stale, they no longer restore sanity. Since most sanity-restoring food items require specific ingredients, it's recommended to consume them as soon as possible in order to benefit from the sanity gain without wasting expensive ingredients for small amounts of hunger and little to no health gains.