PURPOSE: To smoothly and surely feed a food material in a required amount to a molding mechanism by disposing a food material-detecting means between a stirring bar for unfastening the food material and a pair of stirring bars for extruding the food material from a hopper.

CONSTITUTION: In a food material-feeding mechanism equipped with a stirring bar 2 disposed near the opening of a hopper 1 and used for unfastening the food material and with a pair of stirring bars 3, 4 disposed below the stirring bar 2 and rotating in the opposed directions each other to exclude the food material from the hopper, a food-detecting means 5 for detecting the presence of the food material and controlling the rotation of the stirring bar 2 on the basis of the detected signal is disposed between the stirring bar 2 and a pair of the stirring bars 3, 4.