Why do so many fans think replicated food tastes like the "real thing"?

[cooleddie74]

Hell, that's the goal of veggie burger manufacturers, isn't it? To make their products taste as much like meat burgers as possible so as to appeal to a wider customer base and sell more burgers? They clearly are vegetable products pretending to be hamburgers but the right recipe and processing can make them closer to the real thing.

 

[BillJ]

If replicators (and holodecks) use transporter technology, and transporter technology is up to the job of assembling your whole body, your brain and it's contents, it's certainly up to materialising a steak.

That would be the assumption I'm working under. The replicator is rearranging things at the molecular level, so I imagine a "steak" would be a steak.

 

[at Quark's]

I'd say that, because taste is a perception, whilst replicated food is molecularly identical to naturally grown food in every way, because the humans on the show know it isn't "real" it somehow doesn't taste right to them. Basically, the whole thing is the result of the wonky way in which human perceive the world... if your food materializes from thin air in a slot, it's just never quite going to be right.

And yet, ironically, a lot of people don't have that problem with some of today's 'processed' foods that have been processed to such a degree that there are very few 'real' ingredients left. At worst, they'll complain that it isn't healthy but not that it isn't tasty. Heck, even most of our 'natural' foods today aren't really that natural (a cultivated apple is significantly different from a wild apple). Yet, people don't mind. I suspect that people will get used to laboratory grown meat as well, once it has become as good as 'real meat' and has been around for a few decades, and will start to see eating 'real' meat as barbaric. So why would the final hurdle of replicated food be so difficult to take?

Celsius vs Fahrenheit?
What if the issue is that people inputting the original recipes just aren't very good at it? You have engineers putting in parameters to make dishes from scratch without scanning an original. Then on the foods that are scanned from an original, the cooks who are actually good at making food from scratch might not want their dishes scanned at all, for a variety of reasons (for one thing it would reduce their own value). Leaving you with amateur made, average tasting dishes to choose from.

To me that sounds a bit like 'why would professional musicians ever allow themselves to be recorded? It would reduce their value'. They probably would be persuaded by the royalties they'd get every time someone uses one of their recipes, were it not for the fact that this is the Federation. Since this is the Federation, they'll just submit their recipes altruistically. because all they want is to increase the quality of life for their fellow Federation citizens.

 

[Relayer1]

Hell, that's the goal of veggie burger manufacturers, isn't it? To make their products taste as much like meat burgers as possible so as to appeal to a wider customer base and sell more burgers? They clearly are vegetable products pretending to be hamburgers but the right recipe and processing can make them closer to the real thing.

Absolutely.

After several decades of buying veggie sausages of varying sorts (some were pretty good), one manufacturer has, at last brought out one indistinguishable from the real thing.

Any processed meat product like sausage, mince or burgers has already destroyed the majority of the texture and "detail" making a piece of meat unique or hard to duplicate.

I expect products to continue getting closer, but we've obviously not got replicators yet...

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If replicators (and holodecks) use transporter technology, and transporter technology is up to the job of assembling your whole body, your brain and it's contents, it's certainly up to materialising a steak.

Yes, but one of the questions that's been raised is, would the Federation by default give you a (perfect replica of a) real steak with all its unhealthy chemicals, or would they, as is suggested by some canonical evidence, give you a healthy substitute that in the judgment of most users is indistinguishable from the real thing, but which tastes discernibly different than real cooked cow to a few?

 

[fireproof78]

So why would the final hurdle of replicated food be so difficult to take?

Same reason why there are people who do not enjoy current veggie substitutes or lab grown meat. It will be difficult because it is different.

 

[Relayer1]

Yes, but one of the questions that's been raised is, would the Federation by default give you a (perfect replica of a) real steak with all its unhealthy chemicals, or would they, as is suggested by some canonical evidence, give you a healthy substitute that in the judgment of most users is indistinguishable from the real thing, but which tastes discernibly different than real cooked cow to a few?

If it's a deliberate tweak for health reasons, there will be opt outs or work arounds. There just will.

Besides, what health considerations - it's the 24th century. They can cure most things...

 

[at Quark's]

In The Price, Deanna has to explicitly ask for 'real chocolate, not one of your perfectly synthesised, ingeniously enhanced imitations'. The replicator then says it is programmed to provide sources of acceptable nutritional value.' but then asks her if she would like to override that. So from that, I'm getting the idea that 1) the default would be for the replicator to give the 'healthy' substitute, and 2) you probably don't need a special authorisation to override that if you want the real, 'unhealthy' thing.

Though there will be limits. We know for example that the Voyager replicators won't replicate nougatch hemlock (a deadly poison), which it presumably could.

 

[Tuskin38]

if they were born after the burn they'd be back to eating shit.

Nothing says 24th replicators didn't use their shit either. that waste must go somewhere. It's just matter, once it's broken down it's not shit any more.

 

[Henoch]

Does the replicator really produce foods with all their unhealthy components like fats, etc. such that crew members have unhealthy diets? Or does it remove/replace the bad stuff with non-bad stuff and force a healthy diet on the crew? If so, then the food might taste "off". It's like saying bacon bits from a jar taste like real pig bacon fried in a pan.

 

[Timo]

It should be noted that this is probably "Starfleet" rather than "replicator". That is, even with "real" chefs at work, Starfleet would refuse to serve non-healthy if tasty foods; having replicators involved doesn't change much there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I was also thinking that there could potentially be sound ethical arguments that justify the banning of patterns derived by scanning food made from slaughtered animals.

Expanding the scene quoted by @BillJ from "Lonely Among Us" [http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/108.htm]:

TASHA: Sorry to call you, sir. Not strictly security. It's about the dietary requirements of the Antican delegates.
RIKER: I thought that had been taken care of in advance, Tasha.
TASHA: So did we, sir. Their live animals were beamed aboard. We were going to preserve the meat for them, but they say we must bring it to them alive.
RIKER: Then do so. Lieutenant Yar was confused. We no longer enslave animals for food purposes.
ANTICAN: But we have seen humans eat meat.
RIKER: You've seen something as fresh and tasty as meat, but inorganically materialised out of patterns used by our transporters.​

No longer enslaving animals sounds like they're ethically against eating real meat. To some that might extend even to literal replicas of it. It might comfort them to know that no real animal was harmed in the production of their food, because the chemical layout is determined by a program that does not use any real samples as references. At that point, there being people who could taste the difference between that and the real thing really would be quite expected.

 

[BillJ]

No longer enslaving animals sounds like they're ethically against eating real meat. To some that might extend even to literal replicas of it. It might comfort them to know that no real animal was harmed in the production of their food, because the chemical layout is determined by a program that does not use any real samples as references. At that point, there being people who could taste the difference between that and the real thing really would be quite expected.

You might have a point if they didn’t have sensors that could read things down to a molecular level. There is no harming of an animal by scanning it. We also know from Joseph Sisko’s restaurant that people do eat real food.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

You might have a point if they didn’t have sensors that could read things down to a molecular level. There is no harming of an animal by scanning it.

(Yeah, but scanning a real steak means the animal was harmed.)

So, what you're saying is, they scan a real live cow, let it go its merry way to go eat some more grass or whatever, then they take the scan as the basis for say a hi-def holographic cow, slaughter the holographic cow, cut it up, throw the holographic steak on the holographic grill, grill it, and scan that for (or simply copy and paste as) your replicator pattern, and all's clear on the ethical front?

Hmmm, OK. If that's what you're saying, then you've changed my mind. A version made like that (and in "hi" enough "def") would be expected to be pretty hard to tell from the real thing.

 

[BillJ]

There’s also this bit from “The Wounded”.

KEIKO: It's very healthy. I had this every morning when I was growing up.
O'BRIEN: What? No muffins or oatmeal, or corned beef and eggs?
KEIKO: For breakfast?
O'BRIEN: Keiko, I've been thinking You've been introducing me to all this wonderful food that you're accustomed to. I'd like to do the same. Isn't that what marriage is about? Sharing?
KEIKO: What kind of foods?
O'BRIEN: Scalloped potatoes, mutton shanks, oxtails and cabbage.
KEIKO: Kind of heavy.
O'BRIEN: Oh, you'll love it, I promise. I can still remember the aromas when my mother was cooking.
KEIKO: She cooked?
O'BRIEN: She didn't believe in a replicator. She thought real food was more nutritious.
KEIKO: She handled real meat? She touched it and cut it?
O'BRIEN: Yeah, like a master chef. She was fantastic. Of course, I'll have to use the replicator, but I'll make something special for you tonight. You'll love it, I promise.

So it doesn’t seem that Earth is in lockstep with the idea of no animal slavery.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There’s also this bit from “The Wounded”.



So it doesn’t seem that Earth is in lockstep with the idea of no animal slavery.

Thanks. And that scene seems to allow the possibility of a difference in chemical composition.

 

[BillJ]

So, what you're saying is, they scan a real live cow, let it go its merry way to go eat some more grass or whatever, then they take the scan as the basis for say a hi-def holographic cow, slaughter the holographic cow, cut it up, throw the holographic steak on the holographic grill, grill it, and scan that for your replicator pattern, and all's clear on the ethical front?

Why would one need to do this when we know what the end point is?

 

[BillJ]

Thanks. And that scene seems to allow the possibility of a difference in chemical composition.

Or we’re animals at heart and like to chop things up...

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Why would one need to do this when we know what the end point is?

How else are you going to have authentic chemical composition? You either have to do it for real, or simulate it. The more you compromise the fidelity of the simulation, the more opportunities there are for differences and variations that take the replicated thing outside the ballpark of what happens when the real thing is made, differences that could be perceived. So, I just took what you said, and folded it as closely as I could into a simulation having the greatest fidelity I could imagine, made with the ST building blocks at hand.

 

[Relayer1]

Transporter scan your cow, sheep, horse, cat or human child, send it on it's way and then materialise the part or parts you want to eat (I'd limit it to mainly muscles). Just don't materialise the bits that think and feel.

Chop it up as per your requirements and you're good.