Food

Food can be obtained by foraging, trapping, farming or hunting Animals and Monsters. Food refills Hunger and some Health, depending on the quality of the food eaten. Almost all raw food can be Cooked on a Campfire to increase the amount of Health/Hunger they restore. In addition to all of this, a Crock Pot may be used for increase the benefits from eating.

Notably, Meat can be used as bait, for the recruitment of Pigs, as an offering to the Pig King for gold nuggets. As a renewable way to gain eggs by giving meats to birds housed in Bird Cages and are a requirement to construct the Meat Effigy. Bunnymen will also become hostile if meat is in the player's inventory. Some Food, such as Monster Meat or Durians, can damage health instead of restoring it.

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


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

Categories
There are several Food categories:


 * Meats — Meats General.png
 * Vegetables— Vegetables General.png
 * Fruits — Fruits 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 ingredient

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, and Mushrooms, which last the same amount of time whether cooked or raw.
 * Food dropped on the ground will perish at 1.5 rate, 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 (Blubber Shipwrecked icon.png) 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.
 * Wigfrid eating Spoiled Food doesn't have the Sanity penalty.