In between bashing orcs, beheading Uruk-hai and defeating Sauron, a hobbit's gotta eat. The Journal of Interdisciplinary Science knows this, too — so they've published a study that calculated exactly how many calories the Fellowship of the Ring would need to complete their journey to Mordor, putting that in terms of lembas (an elven bread or sweetcake). 

According to the report, penned by students Skye Rosetti and Krisho Manaharan of the Center for Interdisciplinary Science at the University of Leicester, a number of factors come into play concerning the Fellowship's caloric intake — such as the discrepancies between species and need (for instance, the difference in necessary caloric intake between a wizard and a dwarf). The figures the students based their calculations off of were the calculated averages they figured out for each of the nine fellows (for reference: hobbits need about 1,800 calories a day to function). 

So, how many calories in total would the average four hobbits, one dwarf, one elf, two humans and one wizard need to reach Mordor? A whopping 1,780,214.59 hot ones. 

So, how does this translate into food from the Tolkien-verse? Rosetti and Manharan know the answer:

"If the elves of Imraldis had provided the Fellowship with lembas, this would equate to them having to carry a total of 675 pieces, or 75 pieces each. For the different species, this equates to 304 for the hobbits, 214 for Gandalf, Aragorn and Boromir; 99 for Gimli and 60 for Legolas."

To wit: a single piece of lembas contains 2,638.5 calories; to put this into perspective, the average American male consumes an average of 2,640 calories per day — which means that one piece of lembas more or less contains an entire day's diet for a human. Either way, thats a lot of lembas.

Via: Popular Science

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