Wizarding/Muggle Food - Wizarding/Muggle Disease

[Catlady]

No: HPFGUIDX 12032

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Scott" <harry_potter00 at y...> wrote:
> We had a great discussion/debate a while ago about whether wizards
> are able to create their own food and such.  I seem to recall that
> we had collectively come to the conclusion that they couldn't, and
> if they did that the food would not stay but disappear after a
> certain length of time.

I think the rest of this list agreed that wizarding folk can't create
food ex nihilo or even by transfiguration, but at best can summon it
from elsewhere. I am not convinced -- I think that wizards who have
enough power and know the right spells can create food, at least by
transfiguration. I think 'enough power' is Molly Weasley level, not
Albus Dumbledore level.
>
> Now I wanted to ask- Did we ever decide if the food which wizards
> eat is provided by muggle suppliers or wizarding ones?

No, we never did decide.

If it comes from Muggle farmers, at what point does it cross over to the
wizarding world: does Mrs. Weasley (for example) shop at a Muggle
supermarket, or does she go to wizarding greengrocer and butcher shops?
Do the owners of wizarding greengrocer and butcher shops go to the same
wholesale markets as owners of Muggle greengrocer and butcher shops? Or
is there a wizarding food wholesaler to interact with the Muggle food
producers / importers?

It is pleasant to think it comes from wizarding farmers who sell it at
wizarding farmers' markets, so the restaurateurs and homemakers must
shop in that narrow time window that the market is taking place. Of
course, there could still be wizarding greengrocers and butchers who
shop at the farmers' market for resale.

If the food comes from wizarding farmers, the wizarding folk wouldn't
have to form an opinion about whether they're willing to eat genetically
modified food, meat from hormone and/or antibiotic treated animals,
which pesticides they don't mind having on their food.

> If it is provided by muggle suppliers then what happens to wizards
> that eat foods that could possibly expose them to Mad Cow Disease
> or other such things. What do they do if food is under cooked and
> they are exposed to salmonella (sp?) etc.

I feel sure that magic can sterilize food of all unwholesome germs, with
just a wand wave before cooking starts.  After all, where is there
anything in literature about wizards or witches or mages dying of Muggle
food-borne diseases or even coming down with Montezuma's revenge? It's
the modern, human-designed enhancements to food that the wizarding folk
haven't had centuries and millennia to develop spells to cure.

> Are they able to heal such diseases instantly? What about Cancer?
> HIV/AIDS? Have they been able to eliminate them through magic? Are
> there diseases and sicknesses that are unique to magic people?

I believe that magic can cure all Muggle type physical diseases by
magic, altho' some of them would require a very powerful mage to cure
and some could be cured only slowly.  Wizarding folk die from old age,
violence, curses, or magical diseases.

Some of the magical diseases are the ones that modern Muggles are too
sophisticated to believe in, like broken hearts, lovesickness, rotting
your liver by drinking yourself to death...

Btw, I believe that anti-STD Charms are quick and easy, as are
Contraceptive Charms. And there has been some discussion on this list of
people struggling with infertility -- I am sure that witches have very
effective fertility charms.  Conception, healthy babies, contraception,
abortion, and seduction were what magic was invented for in the first
place, historically.

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Sister Mary Lunatic" <klaatu at p...> wrote:
> Obviously, they can't cure bad eyesight,
> since so many of them seem to wear glasses!
>
So many of them wear glasses because the literature shows so many
wizards wearing glasses, and the literature shows so many wizards
wearing glasses because the Muggle authors can't think of an old man or
woman who reads a lot of prints in tiny print and/or handwriting without
glasses. But fixing bad eyesight by magic should be so much easier than
regrowing missing bones or shrinking teeth (Muggles can fix several
kinds of bad eyesight by surgery, except that I would NEVER let anyone
put a knife in my eye!). Maybe the real reason for wizarding folk
wearing glasses is that the glasses are magic, maybe allowing the wearer
to see auras or something else normally invisible, maybe preventing the
wearer from seeing through other people's clothes or casting the Evil
Eye.

Harry doesn't know that bad eyesight can be fixed by magic, and no one
ever tells him because they all think he already knows, and the
wizarding ones think his eyeglasses are the magic kind.

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Rina Stewart" <rina at l...> wrote:
> My mom and I were talking about this last week, and we realized that
if
> Hogwarts was a real place, my little brother couldn't go. He uses an
> augmentative communication device called a DynaMyte to speak - it's
> like a portable touchscreen computer. So, obviously, electricity and
> such is needed for it, and Hermione tells us things that work on
> electricity go haywire at Hogwarts. So would they exclude Josh even if

> he was magical, or is there some kind of spell or alternative magical
> device he could use? Kinda interesting to think about how they would
> deal with that. And can you sign spells and have them work? As long as

> they were one handed signs, the wand wouldn't be a problem.

I'm sure they could give him some magic artifact to speak for him (maybe
even give him a magic voice in his own mouth).  The Sorting Hat is an
artifact and it speaks, so surely he could have something that looks
like a whistle that he could put in his mouth like a whistle except it
talks instead of screeching like a whistle.

On another tentacle, with all the things that I am SURE magic can do,
why can't it do at least what cosmetic surgery can do? Why do so many
wizarding folk go around looking ugly, even young girls who cry their
eyes out (is that another magical disease, in which the fallen eyes must
be found where they fell on the floor and rolled under the bed, so that
they can be put back in place?) because 'peers' taunt them for ugliness,
like Moaning Myrtle? Either Beauty is much harder to create than Health,
or maybe magic isn't as effective as I am sure it is.
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