Being serious for a second, someone on Voyager could live comfortably off their replicator rations. However, if someone else over extends them selves by living too well, or coming across a series of unfortunate events that required dedicated replicator use on some other factor than their diet, it would be then that Neelix was the only choice.
(That's reasonable assumptions based on Tom borrowing rations from Harry for a bottle of wine in some episode he was on a date with B'Elanna in.)
Bald conjecture: Is there a correlation between replicator rations and holodeck time? On one hand there is a lot of replicated matter (according to Riker in Encounter at Farpoint) in a holoenvironment, but near the beginning they said the ship's holomatrix power was incompatible with the rest of Voyager's grid, which was later continuously contradicted and became not a fact. Crew has to eat in the mess, in exchange for more holodeck time?
That people have to eat meals in the Mess to save on Power is ridiculously disproportionate, unless replicating a can of refried beans costs the ship 1.21 gigawatts, but dedicating a cargo bay to crops for months to make a few cans of beans is just as insane.
Is replicator technology so efficient that you can replicate a steak dinner for the same power expense as powering a light bulb for a day, or is the amount of power a star ship generates so astonishingly ludicrous that 1.21 gigawats is spare change that gets misplaced under couch cushions?
1 meal = 1 meal, even if the first meal needs the heart of a firing sun exploding to stick it together atom by atom, that could probably keep your car running until the 31st century, and the other needed only a couple ounces of propane.
Something akin to those kitchen/cooking mysteries middle aged women are so fond of.
