How many hunger points does a potato give?

January 14, 2026 •

3 min read

A single raw potato in Minecraft restores 1 hunger point (half of a drumstick) and 0.6 saturation upon consumption. This makes it one of the least effective food items for managing your hunger bar, especially when compared to its cooked variants or other food sources.

Quick Summary

This guide details the specific hunger and saturation values for different types of potatoes within Minecraft's hunger mechanics, offering a comparison of their effectiveness for players' survival.

Key Points

Raw potatoes are inefficient: A raw potato restores only 1 hunger point (half a drumstick) and 0.6 saturation.
Baked potatoes are a superior food source: Cooking a raw potato yields a baked potato, restoring 5 hunger points and 6.0 saturation.
Poisonous potatoes are hazardous: These potatoes restore 2 hunger points but have a 60% chance of poisoning the player, making them a poor choice.
Saturation affects hunger bar drainage: Food saturation is an invisible statistic that controls how long your hunger points last, with baked potatoes offering much higher saturation than their raw counterparts.
Farming potatoes is efficient: A single potato plant can yield multiple potatoes, making them a renewable and effective food source, especially when cooked.

Understanding the Minecraft Hunger System

To truly appreciate the value of a potato, it's essential to first understand how the hunger system in Minecraft works. Your hunger bar is made up of ten drumsticks, which represent a total of 20 hunger points. Eating food restores these points, but a secondary, invisible meter called 'saturation' is also replenished. Saturation is crucial because it controls how long your hunger points last before they start to deplete, essentially acting as a buffer. When your saturation level drops to zero, your hunger bar begins to decrease. This is why some foods, even with moderate hunger-point restoration, can be more effective long-term than others.

The Raw Potato: Minimal Restoration

The most basic form, the raw potato, is one of the weakest food items in the game. It restores just a single hunger point and a tiny amount of saturation, making it a very inefficient option. While potatoes are a common crop, it takes many of them to fill up an empty hunger bar, and you'll quickly become hungry again. This makes consuming raw potatoes only advisable as a last resort, when no better food source is available. To eat a potato, simply hold it in your hotbar and press and hold the 'use' button.

The Baked Potato: A Significant Upgrade

By cooking a raw potato in a furnace, smoker, or campfire, you can turn it into a baked potato, dramatically increasing its nutritional value. A baked potato provides 5 hunger points and 6.0 saturation, a substantial improvement over the raw version. This process makes potatoes a highly efficient and renewable food source for survival players. Smelting potatoes is a simple and fast process, and because a single potato plant can yield multiple potatoes, it's easy to create a large, sustainable food farm.

The Peril of the Poisonous Potato

While harvesting potatoes, there is a small chance to obtain a poisonous potato instead of a regular one. A poisonous potato is a hazardous food item that restores 2 hunger points but comes with a 60% chance of poisoning the player for 5 seconds. This poisoning effect will cause you to lose health, making it an extremely poor food choice unless your situation is truly desperate. The risk of losing health far outweighs the minor hunger restoration it provides. Unlike other status effects, the poison from a poisonous potato can be countered by drinking a milk bucket.

Food Restoration Comparison Table


Food Item	Hunger Points Restored	Saturation Restored	Notes
Raw Potato	1 (½ drumstick)	0.6	Very low efficiency, best avoided.
Baked Potato	5 (2½ drumsticks)	6.0	Excellent efficiency, easily renewable.
Poisonous Potato	2 (1 drumstick)	1.2	High risk of poisoning, inefficient.
Raw Beef	3 (1½ drumsticks)	1.8	Uncooked meat, better than a raw potato but risky for chicken.
Steak	8 (4 drumsticks)	12.8	Top-tier food source, cooked beef.
Bread	5 (2½ drumsticks)	6.0	Good staple food, easily crafted from wheat.
Golden Carrot	6 (3 drumsticks)	14.4	Expensive but highly efficient for saturation.

Maximizing your Potato Harvest

To make potatoes a reliable and sustainable food source, farming them is a great option. A single potato plant can yield more than one potato, allowing you to replant and increase your crop size over time. Here's how to get the most out of your potato farm:

Start Small: Begin by acquiring a few potatoes, either from a village farm, a shipwreck, or as a rare drop from zombies.
Tilled Soil and Water: Use a hoe to till a plot of land and place water within four blocks of the tilled soil to help the crops grow faster.
Light is Key: Make sure your farm is well-lit, as crops require light to grow. Torches or glowstone can be used for indoor farms.
Automate if Possible: For long-term survival, consider building an automated potato farm using a redstone-powered harvester.
Cook for Best Results: Always cook your potatoes to gain the maximum hunger and saturation points. A smoker will cook food twice as fast as a regular furnace.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the number of hunger points a potato provides in Minecraft varies significantly based on its preparation. While a raw potato offers minimal sustenance, cooking it into a baked potato transforms it into a highly efficient and reliable food source for any survivor. Conversely, the rare poisonous potato should be avoided due to the high risk of negative side effects. By understanding these differences and learning to farm and cook your potatoes effectively, you can ensure a stable food supply in your world. For more in-depth information about all food items and hunger mechanics in Minecraft, the official Minecraft Wiki is an excellent resource.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can cook a raw potato in a furnace, a smoker, or on a campfire. A smoker is the fastest option for cooking food items.

No, poisonous potatoes are generally considered useless. They are risky to eat due to the poison effect and cannot be replanted. They are best discarded or used for composting if you have a composter.

Saturation is a hidden mechanic that prevents your hunger bar from depleting immediately after you eat. High saturation values, like those from a baked potato, mean your hunger bar stays full longer.

A golden carrot restores 6 hunger points and a very high 14.4 saturation, making it one of the most efficient food items in the game, although it is more expensive to produce.

Potatoes can be found in village farms, as loot in certain structures like shipwrecks, or as a rare drop from killing zombies.

No, the hunger and saturation values of a potato are fixed regardless of the game's difficulty level. Difficulty affects hunger loss from other actions and starvation damage.

Yes, potatoes are used to breed pigs. However, it is more efficient to cook and eat them yourself, as pigs can also be bred with carrots or beetroot.