
A Balanced Diet
A customizable food group-based nutrition and diet system, forked from the Diet mod.
Screenshots


About this Mod
About
A Balanced Diet is a fork of the Diet, which facilitates the creation and management of dietary food groups in Minecraft. Diet comes with a default configuration that creates five classical food groups (fruits, grains, vegetables, proteins, and sugars). The mod is highly configurable; users and modpack developers can define their own food groups, classifications, diet effects, notifications, etc.
This fork was created to add some additional clarity, balance, and quality of life features. These would have been made as a PR to the original mod, but the author stated the mod is not likely to have any further 1.20.1 updates. These new features are almost entirely optional and data-driven, and include a notification system for crossing specified thresholds, quality overlays to the diet bars that show what thresholds start providing positive or negative effects, and per-food nutrition definition. For more information about these new features see the 3.0 Changelog.
Downloads
Features
Food Groups

Food groups are custom dietary groups that represent the types of food that you have eaten. Each group has a value ranging between 0% and 100% depending on how much of that particular category that a player has eaten. These values increase depending on what types of food a player eats and every group gradually decays when the player uses up their hunger bar.
By default, Diet comes with five classical food groups: Fruits, Grains, Proteins, Vegetables, and Sugars. Nutrition values are typically determined by tags. However, if enabled in the config, they can be set per-food based on datapack files at /diet/food_values.
By editing the diet-groups.toml configuration file in the world save's serverconfig folder, users and modpack developers can create their own custom food groups. Configurable options include:
- Name
- Item Icon
- Hexcode Color
- Ordering
- Default Value
- Gain Multiplier
- Decay Multiplier
Please refer to the wiki for more detailed information. For information about 3.0+ features (like quality indicators, per-food nutrition, and notifications), see the 3.0 Changelog.
Dietary Effects

Dietary effects are custom rewards or penalties applied to players based on certain, configurable food group values. These effects can be configured through the diet-effects.toml file in the world save's serverconfig folder.
Possible effects can include any registered potion effect, vanilla and modded, as well as modifying attributes directly (i.e. increasing maximum health by an arbitrary value). The conditions for these effects are highly configurable, including checking specific values, checking only subsets of groups, applying effects cumulatively for each matching test, and much more.
Please refer to the wiki for more detailed information. For information about 3.0+ features (like quality indicators, per-food nutrition, and notifications), see the 3.0 Changelog.
Commands
Diet registers a few commands to help aid debugging and server management.
/dietget <player> <group>set <player> <group> <value>add <player> <group> <value>subtract <player> <group> <value>reset <player>pause <player>resume <player>export <filter> <argument>notify <target> <notification_id>notifications listnotifications allnotifications group <group_id>notifications set <set_id>notifications message <message_id>notifications options <message_id>notifications reset
Support
Please report all bugs, issues, and feature requests using the issue tracker on the mod's GitHub page. Please do not make issues on the original mod's GitHub page for features only present in this fork.
If preferred, I will respond to any pings in the Discord server for my current modpack, Desolate Planet. Feel free to reach out to me there as well.
License
All source code and assets are licensed under LGPL 3.0.
Donations
Donations to the original mod's author can be sent through Ko-fi.
All proceeds from the ad revenue on this project will be donated to GiveWell.
Compatibility
The standard "five food groups" tag system supports many mods, which can be viewed here, in the original mod's description.
A smaller subset of mods are supported by the custom food values system. A list of these mods can be found in the mod's default datapack. These default values assume a decreased drain rate for fruits and vegetables, and greatly increased drain rates for sugars.
If you would like to request additional support for this system, please open an issue or open a pull request to contribute directly.
Available Versions
How to Install A Balanced Diet on Your Server
Order Server
Order a Minecraft Java server with at least 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended).
Set fabric Loader
In the panel under "Egg", select the fabric loader and matching Minecraft version (1.20.6).
Install Mod
Open the mod browser in the dashboard and search for "A Balanced Diet". Click "Install" – done! Alternatively, upload the .jar via SFTP to the /mods folder.
Compatibility
Mod Loaders
Minecraft Versions
1.20.6, 1.20.5, 1.20.4 (+4 more)
Server-side
✓ RequiredRecommended RAM
4 GB(min. 3 GB)Frequently Asked Questions
A Balanced Diet server crashes on startup – what to do?
Most common cause: wrong fabric version or insufficient RAM. Check the server log (latest.log) for "OutOfMemoryError" or "Mixin" errors. With Mado Hosting: ensure at least 3 GB RAM is allocated and the loader matches the mod version (1.20.6). You can switch loaders with one click in the panel.
Is A Balanced Diet compatible with fabric and forge?
A Balanced Diet officially supports fabric, forge for Minecraft 1.20.6, 1.20.5, 1.20.4. Note: Forge and Fabric mods are NOT cross-compatible – pick one loader and stick with it. The Mado dashboard automatically detects incompatible loader combinations.
Server lagging with A Balanced Diet – how to optimize performance?
Recommended RAM: 4 GB (per 8 players). Use /spark profiler to check if A Balanced Diet consumes the most tick time. Common fixes: reduce server view-distance to 8-10, install "performant" or "starlight" as supplementary mods on Forge. With Mado Hosting, your server runs on NVMe SSDs with dedicated CPU cores for minimal latency.
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