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Food & Demand

Everyone eats; only station- or room-owning factions can run an aquaponics rig (Building a System).

Hunger

Hunger uses the 0–20 food bar. It drains as you act plus a slow passive drain, persists across relogs and restarts, and never causes death. Only Survival and Adventure players drain (Creative and Spectator do not). The bar rises only by eating a food item.

The drain

Source	Drain
Idle / standing	~0.5 food / min on the bare bar — but food banks a reserve that lasts far longer (see Saturation)
Sprinting	+1.0 food / min on top of the idle drain
Real activity	the usual cost of jumping, mining, etc. layered on

A high-saturation meal keeps the bar pinned full well beyond the bare ~40 minutes: roughly a ration ½ hr, a cooked meal 1–1½ hr, and the Superfood ~3 hr. The bar can reach empty, which maxes the (gentle) debuffs. Your server may tune these numbers.

The debuffs (rare, and never lethal)

Hunger is a faint nudge to eat, not a punishment. The effects only start when you're genuinely low, fire rarely, and the worst of them is a small per-pass chance you'll seldom see — especially since a good meal keeps you full for a long time. Each effect re-checks every ~5-second pass; the steady ones (Slowness, jetpack cut) hold while you're below their line, and the flickers (Nausea, Darkness) and the helm-eject roll occasionally at low chances.

Food level	What kicks in
below 4	Slowness I
below 3	+ an occasional Nausea flicker and a stomach growl
below 2	+ Slowness II, jetpack grounded, and a small chance to be thrown from the helm
below 1	+ an occasional Darkness flicker

Jetpack cut. Below 2, your jetpack won't lift you on foot. Drive-Cell fuel is untouched.
Helm-eject. Below 2 while flying a ship, a small (~2%) chance each pass stops the ship and dismounts you. You re-take the helm and carry on. There is no combat grace.

Your server tunes every threshold and the (deliberately low) flicker/eject chances.

Eating

Hold a food item and right-click (at air or a block, main hand only). One item is consumed and the food bar rises; a buff food applies its potion effect.

Real food only. Only the game's food items are edible.
Saturation. Each food restores hunger and banks a saturation reserve that sits above the visible bar and drains first, keeping you full longer. Higher-tier foods carry far more of it, so they last much longer — roughly a ration ½ hr, a cooked meal 1–1½ hr, and the Superfood ~3 hr.
Full-bar guard. At 20 with a no-buff food (the plain ration), eating is blocked with "You're full." A buff food can always be eaten at full hunger.

Food must be cooked

Raw produce and protein aren't edible; they're ingredients. Cook them into meals at a Galley (a station/room cooking module, made at a T2+ Fabricator). Only meals made from fruiting crops (tomato, wheat) carry buffs; leafy and protein meals fill the bar only. The capstone Superfood combines every dish for all six buffs at once. The plain NPC ration is the ready-to-eat floor. The Food Roster lists every dish with its hunger, saturation, and buff; the Crafting wiki has the meal tree and recipes.

Raw lettuce also feeds industry: a Fabricator renders it into biofuel, refined into the life-support cells that capital ship kits need.