@redweasel  

 
Intellectually I knew what this term meant, but my instinct was still to think it was a torture method…

@Darth Sonic
 
so like how none of them ever challenge her to a fight to test her strength? or how everypony thinks dragons are so unfriendly, it’s no wonder she’s falling behind all the time, no matter how hard she tries?
 
there’s no lavaboarding?

This… strikes me as unbelievable. Seriously writers! She’s a DRAGON! She’s rich in potential means of creating cultural friction without something as dumb as “they don’t feed her properly”

@Background Pony #25E3
 
@redweasel  
Aye. Remember the tiny ruby Rarity gave Spike? Apparently that one was worth a whole lot of bits, while others aren’t nearly so.

@Background Pony #25E3
 
there are different quality gems, according to maud. and maybe she never told them she liked gems. it’s not like they’ve known any dragons before. I’m sure she ate gems in front of her friends before though, right?

Seriously gem prices in ponyville must be like 5 for a bit. (If bits are a quarter (USD))  
When the prices are that low then how again are they spending a lot of money buying smolder snacks it’s like buying a few cartons of popcorn for friends at the movies. Not a lot of money. So how does maybe $5.00 constitute as a lot of money? I can’t imagine a dragon eating more than 10-15 gems in a sitting.

Why buy when you can dig them up from almost your own backyard!

they don’t? give her gems? how does she…
 
well anyway it’s definitely a good way to get unders smolder’s skin.
 
if only they hadn’t sent cozy glow to tartarus. she could’ve seen through this mare’s ruse in two shakes of a second!

@cheezedoodle  
This. She’s looking for chinks in their mental armor.

@Scintilla Aquila  
Swift Foot does change the topic pretty quickly to Smolder’s friends’ lack of gem-buying so I think it was more of a rapid-fire gaslighting thing - planting several seeds of doubt without giving her time to think about them clearly.

Dragons can basically eat whatever they want. Spike didn’t even get sick from the baked bads. They just think gems taste good.

@cheezedoodle  
It looks to me like the writing is internally inconsistent about it: as you say, Smolder does seem to indicate in the second panel that she doesn’t need gems to survive; but as Frustration says, she doesn’t challenge Swift’s claim to the contrary in panel 3.

@monolyth  
@Invader-Dreji
 
It seems they greatly prefer them, since Spike is frequently shown to be eating them, prizing them even. He does seem to be able to get along fine on pony food.
 
It’s not unreasonable to assume Smolder prefers gems as well.
 
The argument that dragons need gems is already auto-debunked by Smolder in this very picture, so I’m pretty confused by your reactions. Smolder says herself it’s “pretty good.” Swift Foot is the one who is attempting to push Smolder into resenting pony food.

@Frustration in Excelsis  
Pretty much.

@monolyth  
Is it canon that they don’t?

@monolyth  
Exactly!

Dragons living off gems is not canon

Sweet Apple Acres providing part-time employment for high school students wanting some spending cash sounds like a pretty legit enterprise. Doubtless there are plenty of other businesses hiring part-timers, with Ponyville’s ongoing development.
 
Also throws a dent in the “but how can AJ teach when she has to farm all day” complaint.

@Starswirl  
Oh, that’s doubtlessly what Swift Foot is doing here, I fully agree with that. Especially given how her talk with Gallus is transparently an attempt to appeal to desire for personal power, plain and simple. Swift absolutely has ulterior motives in manipulating the student six, that’s certain.
 
My worry is that she does seem to raise a couple of valid points, chiefly the food thing here, and that these points will be entirely forgotten by the characters and the comic once she’s outed as a villain – like when Neighsay asked how Twilight planned to run a school when she could be called to ship off to who-knows-where at any moment, Twilight dodged the question and the show never actually addressed that issue.

@Frustration in Excelsis  
Especially since Twilight and Pinkie both are quite ready to provide gems for Spike, for example. However, I do believe Swift Foot is turning Smolder against her circle of friends rather than her teachers here, saying they never bothered.

@Ardashir  
By the same token, if you’re running an institution where that requires you to look after several live-in minors, it’s your responsibility to make sure their needs are met – and given how you can literally pick up cartloads of gemstones off the ground in at least two locations right outside of town and someone must supply Spike’s lunches, you’d assume it would be easy for Twilight and co. to do so.

@Invader-Dreji  
Bull how?

Given how easy it seems to be to actually get gemstones in Equestria, how hard can it be for Smolder to find all the gems she wants out in that cave Rarity finds hers in?
 
Heck, she can just ask Spike were he gets his gemstones for dinner. Wouldn’t he help?

Hmm. Reading back through this, it’s interesting to note that only Swift Foot is saying that dragons need to eat gems to survive – Smolder herself only says they usually eat gems and implies nothing more than that, but does not challenge Swift Foot’s claim.
 
@Starswirl  
There’s a difference between needing to eat a certain thing and needing to eat only that thing; you can eat things you don’t need to eat, or for that matter need to eat multiple things. Humans need both animal- and plant-based food in our diets, and in addition we can eat things we don’t strictly need such as sweets.
 
In this case, assuming that dragons need to eat gems to live, it can be that they need to eat gems and need to eat other things in addition or that they need to eat gems and can also safely eat other things on top of that. Both interpretations would be consistent with what this page is saying and with Spike’s own eating habits.

I was about to comment, but then I realized that what I was remembering about dragons’ nutritional needs is not actually canon, just what was posited in The Maretian.