Hunger makes the survival aspect of the game much more interesting. I was playing around with that world I mentioned earlier where I spawned on a small island, and I tried to get a wheat farm up and running, but the wheat was growing too slowly and my food bar was nearly at the bottom after a few days. Thankfully, I found a spider one morning, killed it, made the string into a fishing rod and now I have a supply of delicious fish and the occasional loaf of bread. These small island starts are great, it's like playing a randomly generated survival challenge map.