"Roaring fires, malt beer, red meat off the bone"

I've just been accused of having a healthy lunch, mostly because I dared to have carrots.

One of the multitude of details the Tolkien used to craft his world was in the dietary habits of the various peoples. I've quoted Gimli from the movie, above. We also know that the elves have their lembas, the hobbits have a multitude of meals, and the difference between Sam and Gollum is that the former likes to cook his food.

Life on-board ship was a rather unpleasant experience. At the start of the voyage, the food was mostly quite fresh, and a medium-sized ship would carry live animals to provide some fresh meat. As the voyage went on, these stocks would gradually give way to less and less pleasant foodstuffs. The meat would be replaced by salted meat, and weevils and maggots might well get into the other foods. It should hardly be surprising that scurvy, dysentry, and other dietary problems were rampant.

Napoleon famously said "an army marches on its stomach", and it's well established that armies often had their supply lines attacked in times of war. Even in the most recent conflict in Iraq, the length of the American supply lines was a matter of some concern to those involved.

Finally, I wasn't able to get a decent curry when I was on the continent (probably because I just wasn't looking in the right places). And, the very first meal I got in the hotel in which we were staying was my old nemesis, fish. This was due to it being Friday, of course.

I've provided a whole bunch of examples since they allow me to demonstrate one of the ways I try to provide some flavour to game worlds I design. By simply varying the foods available in different regions, a lot of setting information can be given quite quickly.

Here's another benefit I hadn't previously considered: the typical adventuring group will live off iron rations, which are almost certain to consist of dried jerky and hard biscuits, washed down with water, or perhaps sour wine. This can hardly be considered nutritious. One might argue that adventurers would know about such things, and be sure to get lots of fruit and vegetables, but if one looks to history, that seems unlikely. Hell, if one looks to Scotland, one sees health problems caused by improper nutrition.

Anyway, one can assume that a group with someone with ranks in Wilderness Lore will supplement their diet with freshly-caught meats, and foraged vegetables. However, a group lacking this same (as many groups do), may suffer from scurvy (or equivalent). In D&D terms, this can be modelled as a disease, requiring a Fortitude save every month, with a damage of 1d4 Constitution. This damage cannot be healed normally until the character is provided with proper nutrition. The symptoms of such diseases are left as an exercise for the reader.

Naturally, cure disease would remove the symptoms of such diseases. However, one wonders whether the gods would be pleased at providing this service to their followers so often, for something that can be fixed easily enough.

This detail also answers the question of why famine hasn;t been wiped out, given the availability of create food and water spells. One need only assume that the foodstuffs created by these spells are sufficient to keep someone alive, but not particularly nutritious, and so over-reliance on them would cause the same problems outlined above.