At least part of it might also just be Federation snobbery.

None of the crew on the Enterprise complained of replicated food, and for the most part, the attempts at actual cooking tended to be dismal (Rikers scrambled eggs were inedible to human palates). The only complaint we had was Troi wanting a “real chocolate sundae”, which the computer seemed happy to provide, if it didn’t exceed her nutritional intake guidelines.

The Federation prides real things and real experiences over something they consider fake, and they might consider replicated food to be in that category, even if it is otherwise fine and near-indistinguishable.

We do also know that the computer will remove poisonous substances (like removing the seeds and stems from replicated apple slices) and make as best a balanced nutritional profile it can in what it creates, which might alter the taste a bit, similar to how some healthy-variant recipes aren’t as nice as their counterparts, since they lack the salt and fat for flavour.

I am from Louisiana, where there is exactly one proper way to make gumbo: the way your mom made it. Everything else is clearly garbage, and everyone else is catastrophically wrong.

That is why some people hate replicated food.

My headcanon is that it’s entirely perception. Kind of like how plating the same food in a pretty way can affect how you rate it’s taste. The replicated food can be identical down to the molecule, but the knowledge that Sisko’s Dad handmade your dinner makes you think it’s tastier.

Don’t they ever update the patterns though? Every time a new species joins the federation all their food products need to be added to the database, so there must be some kind of update system. Surely they don’t have to wait for each ship to come back into space dock and have a retrofit.

It has the same vibe as folks who prefer vinyl to digital audio, or manual transmission to automatic.

Since I’m both of those folks I’d probably compromise and replicate ingredients and cook them on a holo-kitchen.

Maybe I’d get O’Brien to store some fresh food in a spare pattern buffer.

One more reason: The dish tastes exactly the same every time. No variation at all.

But when you cook real food, there is always a little variation because the ingredients are usually always slightly different (vegetables more or less watery, meat more or less lean, a little bit more or a little bit less salt or flavouring). It’s one of the main skills of a really good cook: To perceive the subtle differences during the preparation and to bring out the best possible taste incorporating the differences.

I find it hard to believe the recipes wouldn’t be updated based on the number of times someone’s mentioned programming a replicator with additional recipes.

Easier to believe is that it does a not so great job copying more complex foods. Replicated pasta is starch gluten and water. Replicated foie gras probably left out hundreds of trace flavor compounds.

This isn’t how replicators work at all. We know they have tons of different versions of individual recipes, and that you can program your own recipe if you want something custom. The way the shows discuss replicated food, it seems like it just straight up doesn’t taste as good, but probably only very slightly, to the point you can’t really tell the difference if you’ve mostly eaten replicated food your whole life

I saw a theory on reddit years ago that the reason there are no overweight people in Star Trek’s utopia is that the computers keep track of your calorie intake. You order as much food as you like but if you’re over your calorie limit its going to taste like ass because its lowered the carbs or nutritional content of the food in favour of your health

This doesn’t make sense. The most famous replicator food is ordered with a modifier.

“Tea, Earl grey, HOT”

Why not “noodles, pad Thai, extra spicy”

You’re not thinking about replicator/transporter technology as broadly as it’s capable of. There could be hundreds of versions of each individual dish. In fact there could be variation algorithms that make it seem like a unique preparation every single time. And people could simply ask for how they want it prepared, like “roasted peppers, spicy” in the same way they ask for “earl gray, hot”.

Even further, transporter technology is the most over powered technology in the whole start trek universe. It’s a thread you can’t start pulling at otherwise the whole fictional universe falls apart.

For example you could kill anyone anywhere without a trace just by transporting a dose of cyanide into their blood. There would be no hallways wasting valuable space inside the ship, people would simply be transported to wherever they wanted to go (aside from a network of small tunnels for emergencies if the transporter is down). And there would be no need for more than a single docking bay at most, just make the entire hull a single sealed surface and transport the entire shuttle and it’s contents inside. Possibly most universe-breaking is that you’d be able to replicate anything, even equipment. Instead of just one enterprise you could replicate it and have a thousand enterprises, or a million enterprises!

I would guess that the writers have imposed some weird limitations on the tech that would prevent these types of scenarios, but i can’t imagine any that could validly apply to what we’ve seen transporters do in all the various episodes.

In short “It’s good, but it’s not the same as my mother makes it…”

Corollary to 1), it’s not just an original recipe, it’s an approved recipe. With hundreds of people on board a starship, they’d each prefer that the dish were prepared in a slightly different way. Maybe a little more butter, or salt, or whatever that secret ingredient they tasted that one time on Risa.

Unless every person uploads a precise molecular composition of the end dish, it will not be quite to their taste. And if somebody wants a seriously unhealthy version of that dish, will it pass muster to be aboard the ship in the first place? Starfleet has standards, after all.

So it’s the average, least-offensive-to-the-most-people version, and it’s that same exact dish every single time.

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