Carton of Milk

The fed window on this one runs long, well past what most early food gives you, and it comes off an enemy you are already killing constantly while digging. That combination makes it the practical caving food. You are not cooking anything or planning meals, you are eating what the caverns hand you and staying buffed for the whole trip down.

Statue spawned skeletons will not drop it. The game holds food back from statue spawns as a rule, so a skeleton statue rig is useless for this and you have to kill the ones that generate naturally. If you want a stack, a long lit tunnel through the caverns with a decent spawn rate beats any contraption you could build.

• Skeletons dropping milk, plus a tooltip about healthy bones, is a calcium joke and nothing more.