Food Spoilage

On by default. Can be turned off or tuned per world, see Configuration.

Food that players carry slowly goes off. The first time a food is in your inventory, it is dated with the current in-game day. After that it goes through these stages over 10 in-game days (about 3 hours and 20 minutes of play):

Stage	When	Restores
Fresh	first third of its life	100%
Stale	second third	75%
Spoiling	last third	50%
Rotten	after 10 days	turns into Rotten Flesh

Hover over a food to see its stage and how many days it has left, e.g. "Stale (4 days left)".

Details

• Only Plateful food spoils by default. Vanilla food can be included with the vanilla_food_spoils setting; even then, golden apples, golden carrots, enchanted golden apples, honey bottles, dried kelp, chorus fruit, suspicious stew, poisonous potatoes, spider eyes and rotten flesh never spoil.
• Food is checked while it is in a player's inventory. Food stored in a chest keeps its date, so it can be rotten as soon as you pick it up again.
• Food dated on different days won't stack together. Food from the same day stacks normally.
• The chocolate cake does not spoil (it is a block, not a food item).
• Turning the game rule off removes the dates from carried food, and nothing spoils until it is turned back on.