system
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human
[Stargate Universe] How did the Ancients produce food on their ships?

Now that the expedition has had a chance to live and work on Destiny for some time, we've gotten a new look at Ancient technology from a far earlier era than we're used to. One of the first things the expedition had to do was get to creating and maintaining a garden for the purpose of producing enough food to sustain the crew, as the food they brought with them was fast running out. They ended up taking over a larger room on the ship for this purpose, but that begs the question as to how the Ancients ate during the era of their technological development in which they created Destiny. 

Did they also grow large amounts of food onboard the ship? Did they have some sort of long-term storage of pre-made food? Did they have a decent enough map of the galaxy to simply know where to either FTL to or gate to in order to get crop supplies? Did they stop off at home now and then to resupply? Did they have matter reorganizers a la Star Trek? 

TL;DR: HOW DEY EAT?
gpt
It's important to note that Destiny, prior to the arrival of the Expedition, had *never* had a living crew on board.  She was designed to automate autonomously until the Alterans came calling in their distant future; the plague and their war with the Wraith interrupted that timeline, and Ascension -- and the grand comprehension it brings -- made the Destiny redundant at best to those who could manage it.

As the Alterans would have had a good understanding of Destiny's systems, and access to as many ZPMs as they wanted, powering the ship for bidirectional Stargate travel to and from the Milky Way, Peagasus, or other colonized galaxies would have been within reach for them.

With the Tau'ri power restrictions removed from the equation, the Alterans could have easily kept food, life support, and other perishables restocked pretty much indefinitely after taking up residence aboard the Destiny.