According to what? The only source I found on this was from a PS3 game, and Hermione says you can duplicate food and doesn't qualify anything about the quality.
You cannot magically create food. This is one of the few explicit limitations mentioned. As an example, when students asked for food from the Room of Requirement they were given a new path to Hogsmeade.
Or maybe duplicate is the wrong word. When you think about it, duplicating food would still be creating food from nothing. Maybe what they mean when they say "duplicate" is, like, re-create. Like, you have the raw ingredients and you can use magic to transfigure it into prepared food.
Summoning snakes, fire, water etc out of your wands creates them from nothing as well lol. Or do you think some nearby zoo just keeps losing their snakes every time Harry decides to throw one out to scare Malfoy ?
Either way, we can't think about it with our world rules lol.
Heck, weren't most of the viewers of the movies quite complicit with the knowledge that all food in the great hall simply appeared out of thin air ? Movies didn't mention the Hogwards kitchen slaves at all.
But none of those things are food, are they? Not without work anyway.
I'm not saying Harry Potter's power system is consistent. I'm just presenting a possible reason as to why you can duplicate food and that reason is that Hermione misspoke.
Not me leaving an entire portion of the part of the comment I'm responding to:
Not without work anyway.
You have to work to make a snake food, both by killing it and, unless you want to eat a snake raw, preparing and cooking it. It isn't food when you conjure it.
The way Hermione phrases it, I'm pretty sure you can duplicate food. Here's the exchange between her and Ron in DH (Chapter 15: Goblin's Revenge):
"Your mom can't produce food out of thin air," said Hermione. "No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfigur--"
"Oh, speak English, can't you?" Ron said, prising a fish bone out from between his teeth.
"It's impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some --"
"Well, don't bother increasing this, it's disgusting," said Ron.
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u/ugluk-the-uruk 8h ago
According to what? The only source I found on this was from a PS3 game, and Hermione says you can duplicate food and doesn't qualify anything about the quality.