Is temporary, magically-created food nourishing?
This has been discussed at length and the rules seem to support more than one interpretation. This question has a long history as the rules for creating things with magic, and how “real” those magically-creating things will be, have gradually changed since First and Second Edition. One of the main threads on this discussion is here: http://forum.atlas-games.com/viewtopic.php?t=1274 The first thing to say is that food created using a ritual (CrHe, CrAn, CrAq) is real, permanently, and behaves like mundane food in every way. The rules are clear on this point and there is strong consensus about food created through rituals. The question is what happens when a character tries to subsist on food that created by a non-ritual spell. Next, some relevant excepts from the rules: The entire second-to-last paragraph under Creo on page 77, which is too long to reproduce here, says in part that “…magically created food only lasts as long as the duration lasts, and someone who has eaten it becomes
