BetterFood automatically eats ordinary food from a player's inventory when hunger falls far enough to use it. Players can toggle automatic eating and its action-bar notifications independently. Both preferences persist on the player's data.
Use Java 21 or the newer Java version required by your server and a compatible Spigot/Paper server. The plugin declares Minecraft API version 1.21.4; check the download page for release compatibility.
Put BetterFood.jar in plugins/ and restart the server. No additional plugin or resource pack is required. MagmaCore is bundled, and BetterFood has no content packs to install.
Automatic eating is enabled by default for players with betterfood.user. Carry supported food and let hunger decrease through normal play. BetterFood consumes one suitable item during the hunger event, restores hunger and saturation, and returns the bowl when consuming supported soups or stews.
BetterFood chooses supported food that fits the hunger deficit. It skips modified items, including renamed food, lore-bearing items, and items carrying custom data. It respects cancelled hunger events.
Supported foods include cooked meats and fish, bread, baked potatoes, carrots, golden carrots, apples, beetroot, berries, melon, cookies, dried kelp, pumpkin pie, potatoes, and ordinary soups and stews. Raw meat and fish and foods with special effects are deliberately excluded. The complete list is in Food.java.
Use /betterfood or its alias /bf.
| Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
/bf |
Toggle automatic eating for yourself. |
/bf toggleEating |
Explicit automatic-eating toggle. |
/bf toggleMessage |
Toggle food-consumption notifications. |
/bf setup |
Open administration and update settings. |
/bf downloadpluginupdate |
Check for and download a plugin update. |
/bf recommendedplugins |
Open the Nightbreak plugin catalog. |
betterfood.user defaults to everyone and controls eating and personal preferences. betterfood.admin defaults to operators and controls setup and updates. Personal toggles must be used in-game.
If food is not consumed, check the player's permission and toggle, the food type, and whether the stack has custom metadata. Hunger must actually decrease; eating is not a timer that constantly refills the bar. Other plugins can cancel hunger changes.
For support, include the server and plugin versions, the food type, whether it is an ordinary unmodified stack, and the steps that reproduce the problem.
Use JDK 21 and the included Gradle wrapper:
.\gradlew.bat shadowJarOn Unix, use ./gradlew shadowJar. The deployable file is build/libs/BetterFood.jar. MC_DIST_DIR optionally selects a shared output directory. Publish a changed MagmaCore dependency to Maven Local before rebuilding.
This checkout's release is 1.5.1. The coordinate com.magmaguy:BetterFood:1.5.1 is available from MagmaGuy's Maven repository.