Well Fed

Well Fed, Plenty Satisfied, and Exquisitely Stuffed are buffs granted to the player depending on the food item consumed. The buff slightly improves all stats (listed below). Additionally, in, life regeneration will only be fully effective while the player is under the effects of one of these buffs.

Only one of these buffs may be active at a time and therefore they do not stack. The buff that is most recently applied takes priority.

Well Fed
Well Fed grants the following boosts:
 * +2 defense
 * +2% critical hit chance for all attacks (except from Summon weapons)
 * +5% melee and mining speed
 * +5% damage (including summons)
 * +0.5 minion knockback
 * +20% movement speed

The buff icon is a chicken leg and 1 star.

Plenty Satisfied
Plenty Satisfied grants the following boosts:
 * +3 defense
 * +3% critical hit chance for all attacks (except from Summon weapons)
 * +7.5% melee speed
 * +7.5% damage (including summons)
 * +0.75 minion knockback
 * +30% movement speed
 * +10% mining speed

The buff icon is a crab and 2 stars.

Exquisitely Stuffed
Exquisitely Stuffed grants the following boosts:
 * +4 defense
 * +4% critical hit chance for all attacks
 * +10% melee speed
 * +10% damage
 * +1 minion knockback
 * +40% movement speed
 * +15% mining speed

The buff icon is a whole chicken and 3 stars.

Causes
The complete list of food items that grant these buffs is listed here.

Tips

 * On pre-1.4 platforms, this buff is simpler, but is still extremely useful as it is easy to obtain, extremely versatile, and has a long duration.
 * During Halloween, Pumpkins for Pumpkin Pie are plentiful, and even at other times the Dryad can supply Pumpkin Seeds to farm them. Other food items can be crafted or picked up from varied sources.
 * Alternatively, a modest amount of fishing for other purposes can provide enough fish to keep a player well fed despite the shorter duration.
 * Most players should carry a stack of "food" items, and try to keep the buff always active. The movement bonus alone would make that worthwhile, but in  food is even more important, as it is required to regenerate health normally.  In any mode, the small but broad boost to combat abilities comes in handy.
 * This is especially true in The Constant seed, where the player can die from starving.
 * Use this buff before boss fights or venturing into dangerous areas to gain a cheap and easy advantage. The movement buff makes it worthwhile even for exploring and mining.
 * On 1.4, the more powerful versions generally have shorter duration but are still fairly accessible.
 * For foodstuffs that provide Exquisitely Stuffed, Burgers dropped from Crimeras and Eater of Souls are the easiest ones to obtain from an enemy. Seafood Dinners crafted from uncommon to rare catches are easier to obtain, but only last for 4 minutes. Golden Delight, crafted from golden critters, provide 48 minutes of Exquisitely Stuffed, the longest lasting buff of all Well Fed tiers.
 * Neon Tetras and Stinkfish should be converted into Seafood Dinners, despite that selling Seafood Dinners from Neon Tetra or Stinkfish is less profitable, other fish of its rarity can be turned into a buff potion.
 * Foodstuffs providing Plenty Satisfied are dropped much more commonly, most noteably Banana Split, dropped from most Pre-Hardmode Underground Desert enemies. The Bowl of Soup, Pumpkin Pie, and Froggle Bunwich can be easily crafted from more common materials.
 * Foodstuffs providing the Well Fed buff are the easiest to obtain, such as the Cooked Fish being crafted from plentiful catches, and Bunny Stew from bunnies.

Trivia

 * The Cooked Marshmallow is currently the only item to have the same duration on all platforms.
 * The stars depicted in the buff icons may be the Michelin Stars, a rating system given to high level restaurants.