alright yes according to the book grace says he has enough coma slurry to get back to erid with a little to spare so the malnourishment era wouldn't have started until they got there, but imo you can finagle your way into starting it en route for sadness and woe purposes pretty easily if you wanna. those slurry portions are designed for coma patients who are expending no energy outside of the medical robot moving their bodies, not for someone who's awake and reasonably mentally / physically active, so I can see him going through it more quickly than he'd accounted for, and maybe grace would decide to set aside a certain amount of the rations for emergencies / for eridian scientists to analyze later. you can find a logically consistent way to start starving that man early, I believe in you.
