How to Manage Food Expiration

This is a guide to managing Food Expiration in Palworld! Learn when food expiration begins, how to prevent food from spoiling, hunger management, and other methods of manual or automated food preservation.

How Food Expiration Works

Timer Starts on Acquisition

Raw food typically has a shorter expiration timer than cooked ones.

Food Expiration is a game mechanic in Palworld that determines how long it takes for one stack of food to diminish (in a game sense, disappear). This timer starts the moment the food is acquired such as picking it up and having it in your inventory.

There are several ways to manipulate this timer, one traditional way is to place it in a cooled appliance such as the Cooler Box, and another is to refresh the timer by simply dropping and picking it up, or by sorting it within an inventory.

Essential to Managing Hunger

Hunger is signified by the orange bar usually located beneath the green HP bar.

Managing Food Expiration is essential part of managing your character's Hunger bar, as well as your Pals'. A fully depleted hunger bar will cause you to lose HP down until it reaches one (1). Fortunately, you will not die from hunger.

Pals, however, will risk starving, and worse, become incapacitated should their Hunger bar fully deplete.

Restoring them to their full health will require them to be stored in the Palbox. To avoid this, make sure that you regularly feed your Pals manually, or automatically through the Feed Box.

Beginner's Guide

Cook Only When Needed

Cooking Extends Expiration Timer

One way to extend the expiration timer of raw food is by cooking it over the campfire (this will give it a new expiration timer). Pals with the Kindling Work Suitability, such as Foxparks, can help in speeding up or automating the cooking process.

You can time this when a food is about a minute away from expiring to extend its use. However, it does add a bit more burden for base management if you do it this way, especially if you plan to cook in batches.

In the case of cooking batches when you do not have proper ways to preserve, your best bet would be to just store and cook pals when you have to.

List of Kindling Work Suitability Pals

Build A Cooler Box

Preserve Food with Cooling

Level	Technology	Points	Description
13	Cooler Box	2	Small food vault. Assign an Ice Pal to help prevent food stored inside from spoiling.
38	Refrigerator	2	Large food vault. Assign an Ice Pal to help prevent food stored inside from spoiling.

The most straightforward way to ensure that your food never expires with minimal hands-on management would be to have either a Cooler Box or a Refrigerator at a base.

Having the food actively cooled will require a Pal with a Cooling Work Suitability to ensure that food preservation through these appliances are maintained.

The Cooler Box can be unlocked for crafting starting at Level 13 and can be crafted with 20 Ingot, 20 Stone, and 5 Ice Organs.

Best Technology to Unlock

Food Expiration Glitches and Exploits

Put Honey or Cotton Candy in Feed Boxes

List of All Food
Honey	Cotton Candy

This exploit forces your Pals to put perishable foods such as Red Berries, Wheat and other gatherable foods obtained from your base inside your cooling storages.

To accomplish this, fill nearly all slots in your Feed Boxes with non-perishable foods like Honey or Candy Floss, leaving one slot available for perishables.

This process forces your base Pals to store the gathered foods in cooling storages rather than the feedbox, effectively reducing the risk of food expiration.

Best Food To Put in Feed Box

Sort Inventory or Move Into Storage

Dropping, picking up, and sorting food will refresh its expiration timer. You will want to time and do this strategically so that you are not always actively moving food around.

You can make it a habit to do it every time you open your inventory. But you will have to practice timing every once in a while!

Refresh Food Expiration Glitch

Palworld Related Guides

Tips and Tricks

General Palworld Tips

General Palworld Tips
Best Starter Pal	How to Level Up Fast
Best Base Locations and How to Move Bases	Best Stats to Upgrade
Best Ancient Technology	Statue of Power Guide
How to Get a Gun Fast and Early in Palworld	Day/Night Cycle
How to Get Ancient Technology Points Fast	Pal Distillation Pod: How to Rank Up Pal
Base Building Guide	Raid Guide
How to Remove Wanted Status	List of Palworld Achievements
Best Palworld Team	How to Destroy and Move Structures
When Do Items and Resources Respawn?	Transferring Characters
Base Level Rewards and Requirements	How to Attack Enemies on Water
Best Structures for Your Base	How to Trade Pals
Best Type Combinations	What to Do in Palworld
Can Pals Evolve in Palworld	How to Mount and Ride Pals
How to Get More Base Storage	When Do Bosses Respawn?
Benefits to Killing Syndicate Thugs	All Black Marketeer Pals
How to Move Bases	How to Create and Join a Guild
Story Walkthrough Guide	Post Game Guide
Pal Buy and Sell Values Explained	Post Game Raid Boss
Choices, Missables, and One-Time Events	How to Fly
How to Handle Pals Not Working and Assign Pals to Jobs	How to Get a Level 5 Work Suitability Pal
List of the Best Palworld Mods	Rare Drops List and Best Rare Drops to Farm
How to Change Player and Pal Names	Stats and IVs Explained
How to Change Your Character's Appearance	How to Keep Items on Death
How Many Pals Are in Palworld	How to Refresh Vendor Stock
Feed Box Optimal Positioning	Pals That Don't Sleep
Level Cap	-

Pal Catching Tips

Pal Catching Tips
How to Catch Pals	How to Catch and Sell Humans
How to Get Lucky Pals	Pal Sphere Farming Guide
How to Reroll Dungeon Bosses	-

Survival and Exploration Tips

Survival and Exploration Tips
How to Cook Pals	How to Farm Paldium Fragments
How to Heal Pals and Player HP	How to Keep Pals Happy and Sane
How to Increase Carrying Capacity	How to Increase Stamina
How to Upgrade Palbox	How to Repair Tools
How to Fix Pal Injuries	How to Revive Pals
How to Cancel Arrows	How to Eat Food
How to Put Out and Avoid Fires	How to Increase Movement Speed
How to Cure Depressed Pals	How to Cure Weakened Pals
How to Cure Pals of Overfull	How to Get Keys
Night Guide: How to Survive the Night	How to Manage Food Expiration

Best Base Locations
Coal Base	Paldium Fragment Base
Ore Base	Sulfur Base
Skill Fruit Base	-

Settings and Multiplayer Tips

Settings and Multiplayer Tips
How to Play Palworld on Mobile Devices	Best World Settings for Palworld
How to Change World Settings	Multiplayer Guide
Does Palworld Have Crossplay?	Is There PvP in Palworld?
How to Save the Game	How to Set Up Dedicated Server
Which Difficulty Settings to Choose	How to Backup Save Data
All Controls and How to Change	How to Drop Items and Pals
All Console Commands and Cheats	Palworld PC System Requirements
How to Migrate Server Data	How to Change Death Penalty Settings
Is There Splitscreen Local Co-Op in Palworld	-

Glitches and Exploits

All Glitches and Exploits
Infinite Pal Sphere Exploit	Guild Save File Deletion Bug
Pal Pathfinding Bug Fix	How to Catch Tower Bosses
Refresh Food Expiration Glitch	Infinite Sweepa Boost Glitch
Carry Weight Glitch	Pal Sphere Gliding Glitch
Egg Duplication Glitch	Instant Pal Revive and Heal Glitch
Infinite Syndicate Thug Glitch	Black Marketeer Gold Glitch
Item Duplication Glitch	2 Combat Pals at A Time Glitch
Unraidable Base Glitch	Clipping Glitch
How to Fix World Save Bug	Infinite Loot Glitch
Infinite XP Glitch	Freeze and Rocket Launcher Glitch
Pal Skill Cooldown Reset Trick	Fierce Fang Glitch