A Better Food System for Modern Minecraft

Spice of Life: Valheim Edition completely overhauls Minecraft's food system, turning it into a proper survival mechanic inspired by Valheim. Food now occupies special slots, lasts for a set duration, and provides you with health, regeneration, and other benefits.

While not required, it's recommended to install food addons like Farmer's Delight alongside this mod.

Why Use This Mod?

Minecraft's default food system is inherently unbalanced. With the addition of numerous food items that are easy to obtain and farm, hunger has become a mere nuisance. When the only goal is to keep the meter full enough for sprinting (like consuming stacks of bread), the problem can be solved within 30 seconds of starting a new world by planting sweet berries or killing a few animals.

Other mods, including previous Spice of Life versions, attempt to fix this by rewarding or punishing players for dietary diversity. But this just adds an extra layer on top of the hunger bar that most players ignore or find ways to bypass.

In Minecraft Alpha, there was no hunger bar, and you ate food to restore health. Spice of Life: Valheim Edition revives this approach with a modern twist. Like in Valheim, you have three food slots that need to be filled. Consuming a food item occupies a slot and provides health and regeneration bonuses until the timer expires. You cannot eat the same food again until the timer runs out (or nearly runs out).

You start with three hearts (configurable) and must eat to increase this up to a maximum of an entire extra health bar when consuming quality food from Farmer's Delight and similar mods. With a full stomach, you also get a slight speed boost (also configurable). These stats are visible when hovering over food items, and after consumption, the food appears above your hotbar with a timer.

This simple system balances many game aspects:

• You must plan when and what to eat instead of just consuming bread
• Survival becomes more challenging since you don't start with full health and must eat well to build durability
• Combat is harder because health regeneration only starts several seconds after taking damage (though golden apples can be eaten anytime)
• Farming and cooking become more valuable as mediocre food is no longer sufficient
• And finally, baking cakes becomes useful—providing a good source of multiple meals that can be quickly consumed after respawning

You can also reset currently consumed food by vomiting, which can be triggered by eating rotten flesh:

Every aspect of the mod is configurable: you can adjust the strength of specific foods, regeneration, and timers.

This fundamentally changes how Minecraft's food system works by effectively disabling the hunger bar, so some other mods may function incorrectly as if the player is starving or full.

The mod is compatible with other mods that modify the hunger bar, such as AppleSkin. But since the hunger bar display is disabled, AppleSkin won't function.