Dinner Plate
The dinner plate is a proposed item, which can turn any Minecraft food into a block, like cake!

This crafting recipe makes a green-ware plate, which is just a clay formation of a plate. It looks like this:

To turn this into a plate, smelt it in a furnace.

You get a complete plate:

Thanks to cerealkiller for the plate pictures!
Once you have a plate, you can put any food on it by right clicking it. From there, you can eat the food at your own pace, so you don't waste any!
Here are some ideas that other users have suggested:
The dinner plate is a proposed item, which can turn any Minecraft food into a block, like cake!

This crafting recipe makes a green-ware plate, which is just a clay formation of a plate. It looks like this:

To turn this into a plate, smelt it in a furnace.

You get a complete plate:

Thanks to cerealkiller for the plate pictures!
Once you have a plate, you can put any food on it by right clicking it. From there, you can eat the food at your own pace, so you don't waste any!
Here are some ideas that other users have suggested:
After finishing meat, a bone will pop out.
Placing food on plates can be a way to feed animals.
After a plate is used, it probably will get dirty. So wash it in a cauldron before using it again!
Eat with silverware like a civilized human!
Maybe THAT could be made of iron!
By popular demand, bowls should be made placeable instead of plates.
Food on plates could be pushed by pistons, and output redstone comparator signals.
For smaller food items, multiple items should fit on one place, for example, cookies and carrots.
Plates are only stackable to 8! Otherwise the tower will topple over!
The amount of hunger food restores stays the same even when on a plate. So if something restores 3 bars, eating one bite will restore one bar and only 2/3 of the food will remain.
Placing food on plates can be a way to feed animals.
After a plate is used, it probably will get dirty. So wash it in a cauldron before using it again!
Eat with silverware like a civilized human!

By popular demand, bowls should be made placeable instead of plates.
Food on plates could be pushed by pistons, and output redstone comparator signals.
For smaller food items, multiple items should fit on one place, for example, cookies and carrots.
Plates are only stackable to 8! Otherwise the tower will topple over!
The amount of hunger food restores stays the same even when on a plate. So if something restores 3 bars, eating one bite will restore one bar and only 2/3 of the food will remain.
Cerealkiller made an amazing signature for this topic! Help us support by using it!
<a href="http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/69158-dinner-plate-all-food-like-cakes"><img src='http://i48.tinypic.com/2nk2l2f.png' /></a>
The signature looks like this:
Another idea in mind: If you have smaller food items, like cookies or carrots, you should be able to fit multiple of them on one plate!
If you like this idea, don't forget to press the green arrow right below this post to give reputation!
See also:
4
Updates
2
Appearance
Trains would be similar in design aspects to minecarts, but with several differences. The model for the train is 5 blocks long, a block wide, and has varied height- in the four 'blocks' in the back, it'd be roughly 1.5 blocks tall, and in the front, it'd be 1 block tall. The outside of the train is wooden and reuses the plank texture, with the front having a metal (think anvil or hopper) 'round' piece in the front to make it look like a real train.
Crafting
The train would be a fairly simple crafting recipe. 3 wooden planks on the top and bottom rows, a minecart with a furnace in the middle-left, a minecart in the center, and an iron block in the front. With this recipe, you can make yourself a train of your own!
Usage
Trains would work like a bigger minecart- with 3 slots instead of one. Unlike a minecart, which you craft items into to get things like storage carts, you place chests/TNT/hoppers inside of your train's seats. To do this, just sneak and right-click them into place. With 3 slots open, you can take friends for a trip, bring heavy loads on a long ride, or set up a dastardly dangerous trap with 3 blocks of TNT. Or you can just have fun pretending you're a cowboy in the west, or you're heading to Hogwarts or something. In addition to more space, the Train can take up to 18 hits- 3 times as much as a singular minecart!
However, with these advantages come some disadvantages. Just like the crafting recipe implies, the back of the train has a furnace, which you have to power to keep your big old train moving. The stronger the fuel, the faster you move. As well, due to the train's size, it cannot make instant turns- there must be at least three rails between each curve in the track before a train can turn again.
In closing, I think that trains would add a lot to Minecraft. Mass transportation of goods, a fun ride with friends, big moving explosions, or even a rollercoaster that can hold multiple people in one cart! I hope you enjoy this idea, and feel free to give feedback- I want this idea to become the best it can be!
3
3
13w18a is out! From the changelog, it's mostly bugfixes, but they added...
1
The game shouldn't be skewed entirely towards PvP- while balancing all elements of the game is good, they shouldn't mess with balance for the sake of just one style of gameplay. Besides, pig riding itself is a novelty, and riding a pig from point A to point B can be done even better on a horse or with minecarts.
4
Actually, under current circumstances, craftable saddles would still be balanced. Horses are very rare already, so really, it's just making half of owning a horse less rare, which is actually a good thing since horses and their gear are both/will be pointlessly rare. Pig riding is mainly a novelty, and carrots are rare for those who want to control it with a carrot on a stick,
18
These changes Jeb has announced, along with the crippling 1% chance of spawning for horses cripples the usefulness of the new mount. They're already rare enough (I'm op on a server with 20+ regular players and only a handful have located horses) and making the materials needed to maintain them exclusive to dungeon chests severely limits how useful they can be. While Jeb says they're supposed to be rare, there's a fine line between 'reasonably rare' and 'frustratingly hard to locate', and it's a line horses have crossed.
While I understand that horses are supposed to be rare and for use in the endgame, i feel like if you have to run around in a plain biome for a while (not to mention the long journey if you live far from a plain) is tedious, and putting all the equipment for making your new majestic steed useful in randomly generated dungeons is just plain boring and makes getting such a mount a tedious process. Another thing I would like to point out is that in this game, we can kill abominations that beat you up if you even look at them funny, get teleporting pearls, go to another dimension, get some powder with the very essence of fire itself, and put those together to go to a floating island and slay a dragon, yet we can't make a simple saddle out of leather.
I don't mean to be whiny, and I appreciate all the hard work Mojang puts into this game for the fans, but I feel like if you make one mob very rare and then shove all the equipment for riding it and keeping it safe in dungeons, you're making them more of a chore to maintain than a useful mount in the later portions of the game.
1
1
7