Sickness is a feature added in version 2.1. It is caused by eating moldy food, raw food, Sea Urchins or eating the same food for too long. It is very dangerous and leaves you vulnerable.
Player having a nausea attack
Description (from Help Topics)
When you eat raw meat, uncooked eggs, Sea Urchins or any food that has been allowed to rot, the player may become sick.
Sickness is an unpleasant condition. Your health will slowly drop down to a single heart, making you very vulnerable. Your activities will be constantly interrupted by tossing cookies and nausea attacks. You will move slowly, be weak and tire easily. You will not be able to eat certain food types.
It is best to sleep it off, maybe in the morning your stomach will get better.
Notes
- A vomit attack lasts 2 seconds. You are immobilized and must wait it out. It decreases your health but will not kill you.
- A nausea attack lasts one second and while you are able to move, your vision goes green; making it very difficult to see.
- Consuming any food when sick causes you to have a vomit or nausea attack. So although sickness won't kill you, hunger can.
- Your character begins to move slower, is weaker and tires easier.
- Sickness can weaken you so much that a single hit or minor fall will very likely finish you off, (unless it just started or it is less than one heart of damage.)
- You can become so weak that you are unable to extricate yourself from even a single block of water. If you have wooden armor, this will help you float and may allow you to get out of the water even when very weak.
- Sanitation is saved separately for each type of food. Satiation increases by nutrition value, or 0.5 if nutrition value is less than 0.5. If satiation after eating food is more than 3.5, sickness begins. Satiation decreases by 0.5 per in-game day (20 real minutes).
- Blocks and items are changed simultaneously every Rot period minutes, but the exact moments of change are different. When the world is created, items begin to change after a minute of real time, unlike blocks. Rot is disabled in Creative and Adventure and for everything whose Rot period <= 0. Rotting ones have 2 stages: fresh and stale. The rotten ones go through the same 2 stages.
Recommendations
Vary your diet. Grow many crops in your farms such as pumpkins or rye. Take advantage of laid eggs around you, have cattle near your home and milk cows. Do not under any circumstance consume rotten items! Avoid raw food as much as possible. It is best to cook food.