Food to Stormlight

[QuantumSpren]

Does Lift get Stormlight from food because the food absorbed Stormlight (plants get Stormlight from highstorms, what will become meat eats those plants etc.)? Or would it work for any food (like from Scadrial)?

[The One Who Connects]

4 minutes ago, QuantumSpren said:

That is interesting, does she use sugar to draw it from somewhere, or does she produce it, because that would be a way to convert normal energy into investiture.

Here

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

She can metabolize-- She can draw-- It’s not actually the food, it’s-- It’s not like the metals, not exactly. It’s not-- What she can do is she can metabolize into investiture instead of sugar. Does that make sense?

Argent

Yeah.

Brandon Sanderson

We metabolize food into sugar. She can metabolize it into investiture. Does that make sense? She’s got to have a blood sugar spike.

Argent

So if she eats like a cake it will give her more investiture--

Brandon Sanderson

Faster. It will give her faster.

Argent

Whereas if she eats a vegetable...

Brandon Sanderson

Vegetable... More calories is going to equal more. But the better comparison would be a sausage and bread. Because bread is a fast blood sugar spike and the sausage is not. And that’s how I’m working in my head. It’s kind of a magical version of a blood sugar spike and I have it happen to her faster than it could happen. Like normally you eat a piece of bread and your blood sugar spikes in a half hour, it’s going to go faster for Lift. Hers is like five minutes, but sausage would be slower.

 

[Dunkum]

It is probably just any food.  stormlight tends to leak out of things, so any ingredient that has been stored, like grain or flour, would tend to lose any stormlight it migth have, and most animals are likely kept inside during a highstorm, so would not tend to absorb any stormlight.

[Spoolofwhool]

It has been described as actually exchanging sugar for stormlight, not deriving it from food storages.  In addition, a clear loss is occurring since she becomes hungry.

[The One Who Connects]

15 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

In addition, a clear loss is occurring since she becomes hungry.

I think Wyndle attempted to explain that as once she has used all the "energy" from the food, she attempts to use any spare energy she has in her body, which could account for the weakness afterwards.

[Spoolofwhool]

Just now, The One Who Connects said:

I think Wyndle attempted to explain that as once she has used all the "energy" from the food, she attempts to use any spare energy she has in her body, which could account for the weakness afterwards.

Makes sense. She probably starts with undigested sugars, then moves onto those digested into the blood and other parts of the body, which would start warning signals in the body.

[QuantumSpren]

That is interesting, does she use sugar to draw it from somewhere, or does she produce it, because that would be a way to convert normal energy into investiture.

[Spoolofwhool]

My opinion is that she's drawing it from the spiritual realm, not somehow converting matter into stormlight.

[Dunkum]

all of which begs the question: just how similar is Lift's food->stormlight process to allomancy's metal->investiture process?

[QuantumSpren]

6 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

all of which begs the question: just how similar is Lift's food->stormlight process to allomancy's metal->investiture process?

True, if Lift was spiked to be a subsumer, could she draw Stormlight directly from her metalmind? 

[Yezrien]

I think this quote from Bands of Mourning might shed some light on this:

Spoiler

The blue lines spread from him as a brilliant web, seeking sources of metal smaller— and farther away— than he could normally sense. At times this seemed to flicker, and for a moment he saw the radiance inside of each person and thing. It felt as if he might be able to move those too.

An awed voice in the back of his mind whispered, They’re all the same. Metal, minds, men, all the same substance.…

Sanderson, Brandon. The Bands of Mourning: A Mistborn Novel (p. 406). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition. 

Spoiler

It looks like this is Cosmere String Theory. Matter, souls, and investiture itself are all fundamentally the same thing. Different arrangements of the same particles, so to speak. All strings, just vibrating at different frequencies. And Lift's digestive system can alter those frequencies, turning matter into investiture.

At risk of getting philosophical... Isn't it said that all things are one in the Spiritual Realm? Then why is everything so separate and diverse here on the physical plane? Because all that sameness is filtered through the Cognitive layer -- through humanity's conception of objects as discrete and fundamentally separate from each other. The universe is shaped by the illusion of separation. 

When Wax held all that investiture from the Bands, he had enough spiritual presence to see past the illusion, and sense the underlying commonalities.

And since Lift is apparently knee-deep in Shadesmar, she's unconsciously manipulating those illusions, and selectively suspending them.