[Magic] How much food can the Blossom spell produce?

[Blind Mapmaker]

Originally Posted by johndallman

And quite malnourished.

Not to mention malus-nourished, too.

[Michael Thayne]

Hmmm. So I knew that if nothing else you'd need to raise some animals for protein. But maybe that wouldn't even work with apples. Does anyone know if another fruit would work better? Or a mix of fruits, that would be fine.

[William]

Potatoes, with a bit of dairy or other source of Vitamin B12, nominally contain all necessary nutrients.

(Edit to add: Apparently you need some Vitamins A and E after potatoes too, although they're still one of your best choices as a staple. Leafy greens typically do well for both.)

[edk926]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Hmmm. So I knew that if nothing else you'd need to raise some animals for protein. But maybe that wouldn't even work with apples. Does anyone know if another fruit would work better? Or a mix of fruits, that would be fine.

You can get a good amount of protein from various nuts and beans, which would probably be how vegans normally get it.

It's better to rely on a mix of fruits and vegetables. Look at Ireland during the Potato Famine for an example why. I'm not a nutritionist or even someone with particularly healthy eating habits, but I think you could get all the vitamins and minerals you need with a combination of like 6 different non-meat sources or so. Winter is going to be an issue in low tech times though.

[Tyneras]

As far as I am aware there are zero foods that a human could survive eating exclusively long term. All foods are deficient in some vital nutrients, and most foods contain an excess of one thing or another that would kill you if you ate 2000 calories worth every day. The closest I know of is potatoes, but an exclusive diet of those will give you serious organ and nerve damage after a year from malnutrition and you'll most likely be dead after 2 years.

Now, you could eat a mixture of fruits and nuts produced by the Blossom spell and probably get by, but you would need to get some sort of animal protein mixed in there or you will die. Even a few insects every day would be enough to survive, though you'd likely have health problems.

Fun story, there was a temple of Indian gurus who had a reputation for surviving exclusively off a bowl of rice each day. They agreed to go to a hospital for examination, and they all fell terribly ill with malnutrition shortly after arriving and earring the rice there. Turns out a few rat droppings and dead insects in their rice was enough to keep them on the ragged edge of survival.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Now, you could eat a mixture of fruits and nuts produced by the Blossom spell and probably get by, but you would need to get some sort of animal protein mixed in there or you will die. Even a few insects every day would be enough to survive, though you'd likely have health problems.

What animal protein are you proposing to need as an essential trace nutrient? Can't be amino acids, none of them are exclusive to animal protein and they're not so much trace nutrients either...

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

What animal protein are you proposing to need as an essential trace nutrient? Can't be amino acids, none of them are exclusive to animal protein and they're not so much trace nutrients either...

B12, which is found only in various animal proteins. Fish, eggs, dairy, etc.

An exclusively Blossom based diet will have no B12 in it, which depending on how stored up you were could take years to kill you when your liver finally runs out of it's stores. But you'll be suffering pretty badly, lots of permanent damage once symptoms start to show up.

I don't know what the nutritional requirements of elves and dwarves are, and yee olde people of fantasy generally ate anything and everything they could get their hands on. Contamination was also pretty high, so your bread probably had plenty of ground up bugs, rats and sometimes the millers fingers mixed in anyway. Low tech vitamin enrichment!

[Inky]

True about the B12, I was all ready to jump on you about it not being true that you can't live without animal food until you mentioned the B12. Bit misleading to say "protein", B12 isn't a protein. You do not need animal food for "protein", that's been demonstrated time and time again; but you do need B12. Everything else, I think, works all right without animal food; I think B12 is the only problem. It's an interesting thought that the Blossom food would presumably not have the bugs in it that food grown in normal TL3 fashion would, since Blossom is a plant spell and presumably only makes plants grow fast and there'd be no time for bugs to move in.

Of course, since they have magic they could always solve that problem by magic, but they'd first have to know what was wrong.

I don't know how you'd get round that.

Of course, if the people using Blossom weren't human but some other species such as elves, they might have evolved to live on plants only and be able to produce B12 internally like other herbivores do (via bacteria, I think, though I don't remember for sure). Or it could just be that in this world there do happen to be plants that contain B12, or B12-producing microbes are more widespread and even humans have them. A detail as tiny as that could surely be overlooked on grounds of "this isn't Earth".

Interesting story about the Indian gurus.

[Tyneras]

Sorry about the confusion, I was using protein in the casual ingredient sense ("Throw in your greens, grated cheese and protein of choice...") rather than the more scientific sense.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

As far as I am aware there are zero foods that a human could survive eating exclusively long term.

There's at least one, but the prions are likely to eventually build up and get you. Of course, eating long pork tends to be on the deep end of the alignment pool.

A spell that exclusively generates fruit, but a lot of it, is certainly useful for meeting caloric requirements, which is primarily what you need to consume food for. Long-term survival will require supplementing this with other food to build back up levels of essential nutrients. Fortunately, humans are fairly good at pattern recognition, so it won't take long to notice that people who eat only apples get sick but those who supplement their diet with other fare don't (and humans will fairly rapidly identify what supplements work, at least roughly speaking). Note if such magic is sufficiently widespread, this will likely be a difference between the wealthy and the poor - the very wealthy can dine on exclusively "naturally-grown" foodstuffs, while those less wealthy must increasingly rely on cheap Blossom-grown fruit.