have your minecraft cake and eat it, too

an interview with my daughter on food in minecraft

We talk about food being political, food being important for storytelling, but what of food in video games?

I didn’t grow up with many video games, aside from the odd visit to a cousin’s place to watch them beat each other up in Mario Kart or WWE games. To consider them for their artistic merit, though, is generally easy for me because of that. I religiously played the Nancy Drew CD mysteries, which were heavily narrative-driven, and filled with niche references to Koko Kringles chocolate bars or Shadow Ranch cooking challenges. The food in those games was part of solving the mystery: cooking to crack the code.

For my daughter, video games are a happy alternative activity, where she’s able to use her critical thinking and build worlds in Minecraft or solve puzzles in Pikmin. Minecraft is the deep obsession, though. She spent her summer diving into kid-powered streaming videos where she learned about the best strategies for gameplay, and regurgitating waves of information to me on our walks around the block with my newborn.

A huge part of parenting as my daughter ages, for me, is actively taking an interest in what is important in her world. I may have been driven mad by the number of Google searches she asked of me (“how do I make honey in Minecraft;” “how do I get a dragon egg in Minecraft;” or “how do I make the Lie Cake”), but I know it’s preparing us for a good relationship as she becomes an adult.

As many of Rey’s questions were about looking up the process involved in mining tools and crafting food, I became intrigued about how food exists in that video game world. Minecraft Fandom (a website I’ve become quite familiar with in recent months), describes food in the game as such:

Food refers to any consumable items that, when eaten, restore hunger points and hunger saturation points, and sometimes cause status effects. They are essential to survival, as going without them eventually causes the player to starve, causing damage until reaching 10 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) in Easy difficulty, and 1 on Normal. Starvation damage kills the player in Hard and Hardcore Mode. Food is eaten by holding use while having the food item selected in the hot bar or in the off-hand.

In a summer marked by extremely vocal Ozempic debates, I found myself thinking about food as a form of online hunger saturation, or food as points to restore survival and heart health points. It’s an interesting (and honestly, refreshing) dichotomy to find oneself in.

To that, I got the idea to speak with her more about the role that food plays in Minecraft, curious to understand how she views it as a player. We conducted a formal interview, where I asked her questions about how food works in her block-shaped world, and whether it’s affected her thoughts about our food system more broadly in real life. We had such a blast getting to chat with each other.

And while I’m obviously biased, the responses she gave in this interview below were heartfelt (and pretty funny). I think, on a societal level, it’s easy to get caught up in the great disconnects we face, how screwed future generations are. While I don’t think Minecraft will save the world, seeing how she makes sense of food through the game and its translation into understanding real life food better was uplifting to witness. Of course, we talk about food and culture and politics together at home regularly, but I think it’s worth considering that the Gen Alpha kids are thinking about the world in far different ways than you may expect.

I’ve transcribed our interview below, and keep in mind, she’s a kid!

Rey’s avatar, made in her likeness

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Sarah: Can you start off by sharing a bit about who you are, your age, and some of your interests?

Rey: My name's Rey. I am nine years old and well, some of my interests are swimming. I love crafting, but I'm not very big on putting it on paper because I'm kind of bad at those things, but I'm better at sculpting it. And I also really like Minecraft.

That’s good, because we’re talking about Minecraft today! For people who haven't played Minecraft before, how would you describe it? What's the purpose of the game?

Well, how I would describe it is, everything in that Minecraft world is blocks. So, nothing is a circle. It is very hard to make a circle in Minecraft. <laughs>

You have two things you can log into. You can do creative or survival mode. Now creative mode, you get all the Minecraft items, and you can just build, you can fly, you can do any structure you want. But survival is different. You have to make all the things, but in creative you don't. You just get the things, and you don't have to make the things.

And what are you surviving from?

It depends on what you log onto. If you log onto easy or hard mode, then you are trying to survive from monsters and you are trying to build a home and get back at the monsters. And in peaceful survival mode basically there are no monsters. It's kind of just like my life right now. How you just have to build things, and you have to get the materials. That's how I think about it.

So, you start with absolutely nothing in the game?

Yes, absolutely. And you have to build your home, your life, everything. That's what it is in survival. But creative, you should get everything. You can make your own home, but then you can make another home and another home. That's usually what I do. And then I build a pizza.

Can you describe your character in Minecraft?

Well, they actually blink, and I find that weird. Sometimes she actually flips her eyes around, like that's creepy. But she has this exact brown hair as me. Her real name's Air, but I don't really go for that. I just call her Rey. <laugh> And she has this yellow t-shirt. She's got some jeans and some shoes, but you can also make clothes in Minecraft. I guess they're not clothes, they’re technically armour.

Awesome. What role does food play in the game? Do you need food to survive, or is it something fun to add on to what you're playing?

It depends again what type you're playing. In peaceful mode, you don't really starve in that. You just build and build. So, you don't really need food in that case, it's just for fun to make those foods. But then survival, you do need those foods.

Oh, okay. And what happens if you don't eat in survival mode?

You die.

<laughs> Are there certain foods that give you more energy or more points?

So, if you cook chicken... Because we can eat raw chicken in Minecraft. Please don't do that in real life. Please, please don't do that. <laugh>. We can kill animals and then we can get their meat. Or we can eat it raw and get half a heart filled up and our food line restored a bit. But really, you want to cook it, so then you get two full hearts.

So, you get more energy if it's cooked?

Yes.

Generally speaking, what does food look like in Minecraft? Is it different from what you see in the real world?

I'd say it does look different in Minecraft because, like I said, it basically is all squares. The mushrooms are a little round and they kind of look like real life, but cartoony. Because it's a video game, not real life. <laugh> Watermelons they really look different, because watermelons in that game are square. And pumpkins are also square. The watermelons are green, and the pumpkins are orange, but that's all you can really tell from it.

What foods are available generally? Is it what you'd find in a grocery store?

It's really different, actually. I'm like, how do I make spaghetti? You can't make spaghetti without these materials. And I'm like, "That's so many materials! How much do you need for a spaghetti!" And then I just have to keep on going and going to find foods that I would like. Like those glow berries, which is a real thing in Minecraft, but I don't think is in real life.

There are loads of different foods but there's not... like there's dried kelp, and we go fishing. We don't have to go to the grocery store to just be like, "Okay, let's see, where's my wallet?" and open the thing, "here's my money, can I have these three watermelons?" In Minecraft, you can't do that. You have to go hunting out for food yourself. You can't just ask someone with your wallet, "Okay, I'd like this, that, and that." <laugh> You need to get food outside. Like if you want to go fishing, you need a fishing rod. So, you also need tools to get other things.

There seemed to be a lot of steps that you talked about in terms of making food. It looks like you need ingredients and tools to make food. Can you talk through what that's like with an example? Maybe fishing is a good one to start with.

Well, for fish, you actually have to go mining for coal, because how are you going cook it? In normal life, you'd be like, "wait, I don't have to cook it. I can just put it in the oven, could turn up the volume." No, we need a furnace, which is, I'm pretty sure made from about out 10 blocks in the crafting table. But the main thing is a furnace and a crafting table. Those are the tools that you need to make food. We don't have like spoons in Minecraft. But you do need bowls, too. We can make wooden bowls.

With fish, you also need a fishing rod, which requires string and sticks that you need to get. And then you have to go into water and wait until a fish comes and bites at you. It's a whole process. And then you have to put it in the furnace, wait for it until it cooks, and then you can eat it.

But then cake, you don't need to cook it. Instead, you need to get a bunch of ingredients, put it in the crafting table and you got the cake.

Oh, okay! Given how you have to break cooking down into smaller steps or smaller ingredients, even breakdown what you need for a fishing rod... Does that change how you think about food in real life at all?

It kinda does. Because now I know that food probably in real life takes long, long steps. Maybe not the exact steps of the game, like you need to bake a cake in real life. <laugh>. It's just kind of weird if you don't. And you can't eat raw chicken. But I mean the process that you have to do to get up to there or here and that you've got to keep on doing it, is like, big.

Yeah, it definitely is. Has it made you curious at all about the steps that we have to take to get food here, in real life? What sorts of things do you think about, or do you wonder about real food?

Yeah, it makes me curious. I wonder how they make tofu. Minecraft doesn't exactly tell us how to make tofu, but I've seen all these steps for tofu in Minecraft, and I just want to know how to really make tofu! It just randomly comes to mind. I'm like, "how do you make tofu!"

I can show you! It's really cool to watch. So, are there rules as to how a character eats? Are there any other rules to food?

Well, you can't eat the food unless you're hungry. But if you're fully full, you can't eat any food.

What happens? It just doesn't let you?

Yeah, it doesn't let you, you try pressing the button and you just can't eat it. So, you have to wait until you're hungry again.

There's a lot of really cool animals in this game from what you've shown me, and some of them look like they're for food, some are pets, some you get resources from. Can you talk a little bit about the role that animals play in Minecraft food?

The roles they play is just walking around feeding themselves. But then we come in, and we're the big hunters. We don't really need swords, but I kinda use my bare fist and sometimes their flesh, the flesh of the animals to kill their brothers. <laugh>

Oh my god, Rey!

But they're really helpful, because without them you kind of starve. All you would have otherwise are apples and bread. With no animals, you would just have apples and bread. Because we're kind of limited on Minecraft.

Can you survive in Minecraft with apples and bread alone?

Yeah, you can, but I don't think your stomach's going to feel well. And I think you're going to see some Minecraft barf.

Has that made you think about animals any differently in the real world and like what role they play with us?

Kinda no.

Fair enough. Okay, last question. Is there anything else about food in Minecraft that you wanted to bring up, that I might have missed?

I just want to remind people, don't eat raw chicken or raw beef. Please, please do not. Please, please.

Well thank you, Rey, for taking the time to talk to me.

You are welcome <laugh>. Thank you for having me.

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