Stupid food-related question-What's Real, What's Not?

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 96145

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Scott Santangelo
<owlery2003 at y...> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Way too much time on my hands. Thinking about the magical appearance
of food. DD can twiddle-up a tray of tea and cakes. McGonagal can
whip-up a plate of sandwiches (that continues to renew itself). Molly
can make creamy sauces flow from her wand. So why is food ever an
issue if you're a wizard? Why would Lupin ever *not* have a square
meal? Why would Sirius be starving in a cave with Buckbeak, waiting
for deliveries from Harry (he'd have a wand by then, too, or at least
the use of Harry's)? The magical availability of foodstuffs would go a
long way to explaining the Weasley family economy (lord, feeding that
family!). But we don't see the magical creation of packaged "brand"
foods (Cribbages Wizarding Crackers, sweets, etc.). Thoughts?
> 
> owlery2003

bboy_mn:

When JKRowling was designing her magical world, she knew this very
question would come up, and based on an interview this was her answer.

There is a difference between something that magically appears and
something that magically appears 'out of thin air'. In the beginning,
as far as Harry is concerned, the food on the house tables in the
Great Hall magically appear 'out of thin air'. Only later does Harry
discover that the elves are magically sending it up from the kitchen
below. The food is real, it exists, it's been cooked by the elves and
moved up to the table using what I call a 'Transfer Charm'.

Molly on the other hand is Conjuring 'out of thin air' a rich white
sauce. Admittedly, she could simply be drawing together ingredients on
hand, but for purposes of illustration, let's say she Conjures it. To
conjure something out of thin air, means to create something from
nothing. Since it was created from nothing, the spell and the food
aren't permanent; it eventually returns to nothing.

So, you could eat tons of conjured food and satisfy you appetite, but
you would never satisfy your hunger because, after a short period of
time, the food in your stomach would disappear. The conjured food
which was created from nothing, would eventually return to nothing. 

It is realy food while it exists, conjured ice cream is still ice
cream, the problem is that it doesn't exist for long, consequently, if
you try to survive on it, you would eventually starve to death.

So, Dumbledore and McGonagall probably transferred real food from the
kitchens to their locations. Although since McGonagall' sandwiches
represented a meal, and Dumbledore's tea and cakes were just a snack,
perhaps only McGonagall's food was real.

'Too bad, so sad,' you might say, but give it a second thought. If you
were on a diet, you could eat a real salad, along with a conjured beef
steak, a mountain of conjured potatoes and gravy, and a quart of
conjured ice cream for desert, and a few minute later, you would only
have the calories of the salad. If that isn't a dieter's dream, I
don't know what is.

Mmmmm... gallons of ice cream, and not a single calory. Yummy!

Just passing it along.

bboy_mn