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

[Christopher]

I don't buy that making things artificially more healthy is possible without changing the taste.

It's centuries in the future. Who knows what they've figured out that we don't know yet?

I mean, heck, the whole idea of synthehol is that it's an artificial alcohol substitute that has the same taste and "buzz" as alcohol but isn't actually intoxicating/incapacitating and can be shaken off at will. So clearly there's some very sophisticated molecular engineering going on there. If they can do that convincingly enough to satisfy drinkers, it stands to reason they could convincingly engineer a healthy food to taste like an unhealthy one. Flavor is all just chemistry, after all.

It's fine if that's all you know, but once you've had the real stuff? I assume that gap is where most of Replicators bad reputation comes from.

I doubt that's true at all. As I said, I think it's misconstruing Deanna's line in "The Price" to think it's about the replicated stuff tasting bad. What she wants is the imperfection and unhealthiness of the real thing, the feeling of indulging herself with something bad for her.

I'll bet most Federation civilians don't have the authority to ask for non-health modified food out of their government supplied replicator. If you are going to let the Federation feed you, you'll eat what the Federation thinks is good for you.

Wow, that's a bizarrely dystopian reading of how the Federation works. But I'll only make the specific point that you can't realistically extrapolate to civilian life from what we've seen of Starfleet life. It stands to reason that Starfleet personnel on a Starfleet ship would be subject to more control, and more regulation of their health and fitness, than civilians would be.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't buy that making things artificially more healthy is possible without changing the taste. It's fine if that's all you know, but once you've had the real stuff? I assume that gap is where most of Replicators bad reputation comes from. I'll bet most Federation civilians don't have the authority to ask for non-health modified food out of their government supplied replicator. If you are going to let the Federation feed you, you'll eat what the Federation thinks is good for you.

Wow, that got dark extremely quickly. Our utopia, everyone?

I figure the average person doesn't know or particularly care in terms of replicated food. They can tinker around with it and program it as much, or as little as they want. Some will find the differences and others will be perfectly satisfied with the day to day results.

 

[Christopher]

I remain convinced that the only real difference between replicated and natural food is lack of variety. Every replicated apple is an exact, perfect transporter duplicate of the original, natural-grown apple that was scanned as the template for the replicator pattern, with exactly the same size and shape and firmness and ripeness. It's an identical experience to eating the real apple, every bit as good as that apple would've been if you'd eaten it at the moment it was scanned. But over time, you'd get tired of eating the exact same apple over and over again, without the variation you'd get from real apples.

 

[fireproof78]

Star Trek: to seek out new life and new recipes.

 

[Unicron]

That's looking at the wrong part of history, though. I mean, hell yes, the arrival of a post-scarcity era would destabilize any current economic system based on scarcity. It's supposed to. It's supposed to replace it altogether, the same way democracy replaced monarchy, say. But Star Trek is not set at the beginning of that process, it's set much later, when the new economic system is solidly in place and scarcity-based systems like capitalism are historical relics.

Not all monarchies are incompatible with democracies, though. There are some forms of government that combine the two, where the monarchy has a significant role if not the same power as an absolute monarchy would have. I get where you're coming from, but I admit for myself I'm not overly keen on Gene's post-scarcity utopia as early TNG tried to do it. YMMV of course.

What the hell are you talking about? Replicators in Star Trek are ubiquitous. What's the point of making up a counterfactual that has nothing to do with what we're actually discussing here, which is Star Trek's portrayal of its future?

Because it's been established that while replicators are a common technology in some cultures, like the Federation, they're not that common everywhere. Neelix wasn't familiar with them before he came on Voyager, and neither were the Kazon apparently. Even though both of them had otherwise similar levels of technology. And given that the Kazon are a fractured people who frequently fought each other as well as external enemies, I'm reasonably sure that a lot of their replicator use (with that technology) would go towards weapons and other such items. Because from their perspective, they're out to survive.

I already told you that! The value is not in the physical materials that make it up, it's in its direct connection to historical figures or events. The painting that was created by Leonardo's own hand has more value than the copy that was created by a replicator. I would have thought that entirely obvious.

So given that we're also discussing an era when you can go to the holodeck and make a replica of Leonardo himself, who is presumably for all intents a valid and capable one, how are his creations any "less" good than the original version that lived centuries ago? Why not have this Leonardo reproduce any of his works in a replicated form that's as good as the original?

Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this, but I'm having trouble comprehending your argument that replicators would efficiently remove our concept of economic value/rarity and yet the original versions will still have a "higher" one than a flawlessly replicated one that can be produced in any volume.

It's kind of like Riker's conversation about cloning in "Up The Long Ladder."

GRANGER: We need an infusion of fresh DNA. I was hoping that you would be willing to share tissue samples from your crew.

RIKER: You want to clone us?

GRANGER: Yes.

RIKER: No way. Not me.

GRANGER: How can you possibly be harmed?

RIKER: It's not a question of harm. A single William Riker is unique, maybe even special. Hundreds or thousands of them diminish me in a way I can't explain.

GRANGER: You would be preserving yourself.

RIKER: Human beings have another way of doing that. We have children.

And again, we're talking about a post-scarcity economy where nobody cares about monetary value or wealth. Everybody would be insanely rich by modern standards, able to obtain any material object with the punch of a few replicator buttons, so there's no incentive for greed or cheating. If you wanted to own something, it wouldn't be because of some perceived, arbitrary conception of material value, but merely because you like it or find it useful.

Again we might have to agree to disagree here. I think instinctive desire, if not necessarily greed, is intrinsic to humans and many other fictional cultures. Just ask Harry Mudd or Vash.

For the record, I want to clarify that I don't consider myself as anti-replicator as some of the production staff on TNG and VOY. But I do understand some of where those complaints came from, from a writing perspective. In the same way that the UT is an fascinating concept but one that's arguably lazy in application (because the show can't necessarily afford a separate communications chief, nor necessarily use them well all the time), I think both are cool concepts. I just have come to feel they might work better on a more limited scale than what we see.

Again, YMMV.

 

[Christopher]

]I get where you're coming from, but I admit for myself I'm not overly keen on Gene's post-scarcity utopia as early TNG tried to do it. YMMV of course.

At no point in this conversation have I been talking about "Gene." The concept of a post-scarcity economy has an existence well beyond Star Trek. Hell, my whole point is that Star Trek's producers failed to engage with the ramifications of a post-scarcity system as well as other science fiction and futurism have done over the years, because of what was referenced earlier about the producers not liking how replicators changed things from what they were used to. Change from what we're used to is what science fiction should embrace, not retreat from.

So given that we're also discussing an era when you can go to the holodeck and make a replica of Leonardo himself, who is presumably for all intents a valid and capable one, how are his creations any "less" good than the original version that lived centuries ago? Why not have this Leonardo reproduce any of his works in a replicated form that's as good as the original?

Don't be ridiculous. That's not a "replica" of Leonardo any more than a painting of him would be. It doesn't have Leonardo's consciousness, it's just an animated character impersonating him.

Not only that, but you're positing that I'm saying the exact opposite of what I'm actually saying, which is that an identical copy is not as valuable because it's not the original object that was directly created by the original artist or involved in the original historical events.

Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this, but I'm having trouble comprehending your argument that replicators would efficiently remove our concept of economic value/rarity and yet the original versions will still have a "higher" one than a flawlessly replicated one that can be produced in any volume.

Because you're trapped by the assumption that value is about physical material rather than meaning and historical context. You still think I'm talking about monetary value, when my whole point is that that is not how a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society would define value.

Again we might have to agree to disagree here. I think instinctive desire, if not necessarily greed, is intrinsic to humans and many other fictional cultures. Just ask Harry Mudd or Vash.

Yes, sure, but that does not mean that the only possible thing to desire is hunks of metal or bits of paper with presidents on them. A society that had no need for money and no scarcity of material possessions would find different things to value, like information, reputation, social status, emotional fulfillment, any number of intangible, non-material things.

For instance, if you can recycle garbage into new possessions with the push of a button, then there's no point in valuing a new car or a new dress or whatever, since you can get it for free. Material value would be meaningless because there's no shortage of material wealth. But a person's skills, their ability to create or perform or do a specialized task, would always be valuable. So you could have an economy based on trading people's knowledge and skill, hiring them to do jobs for you, say. People like artists or designers or writers or actors or singers, or doctors or scientists or engineers or teachers, would always have valuable services to market. In that context, a person's desire for value and success could manifest as their desire to develop a special skill that people will want to hire them for or will appreciate them for, or conversely to acquire the services of someone admired for their special skills.

In my Arachne-Troubleshooter Universe, in the story "Twilight's Captives," there's a group called the Nocturne League, an alliance of alien species that's traded among different worlds for centuries, traveling in slower-than-light argosies before eventually acquiring warp drive from humans. I had to figure out why they'd bother to travel physically in ships when they could just transmit any information such as technology designs or possessions that could be fabricated/replicated at the destination. I realized that what would be of value to them would be the skills of individuals -- as well as the prestige of owning actual rare objects imported from distant worlds rather than synthesized replicas, the same reason that traders in past centuries were able to profit from importing spices and silks and pottery the like, because their very rarity and exotic origins were the source of their value. The real thing would have a cachet that a locally made replica would lack.

 

[dupersuper]

Spoiled 24th century folk complaining about their replicated food don't know how good they have it: if they were born after the burn they'd be back to eating shit.

I'll bet most Federation civilians don't have the authority to ask for non-health modified food out of their government supplied replicator.

You have a very draconian view of the Federation...

 

[Deks]

Everytime there's a topic about replicated food, someone mentions that it must taste identical to natural grown food. Why? There's actually a lot of evidence from the TNG Technical Manual ("Single Bit Errors") and from many episodes (The dialogue between Admiral Vance and Osyraa being just one recent example) that there are really differences in taste between "real", that means natural grown, food and the replicated variety.

So let's discuss this issue.

The technical manual isn't considered canon, so that wouldn't really apply.
What do we know of 24th century replicator technology?
It has been mentioned that replicators convert energy into matter - hence the power expenditure (23rd and 32nd century replication however seems to be working along the lines of matter to matter conversion - which is one of the function of 24th century replicators as well, but energy to matter is seemingly mostly used in the 24th century probably due to relative abundance of energy - whereas the Burn could have prompted UFP to switch to less energy intensive measures due to scarcity of dilithium which would imply relative scarcity of energy as well - less dilithium means you cannot exactly replace them for focused M/AM reactions, which would prompt UFP to switch to different methods).

We also know that sensors work down to the subatomic level in the 24th century. As such, there is no reason to think replicated food cannot taste like the real thing.
The detail in scans of food composition, chemical and protein structure would be relatively simple for a replicator to reproduce down to being indistinguishable from the real thing.

It seems to me that most of the 'complaints' about replicated food not tasting like the real thing was attributed to a handful of characters making such a statement a handful of times.... all of which could easily be attributed to differences in recipes and 'nostalgia'.
Namely, dishes that certain crew members remember might not taste the same because the recipe in the replicator doesn't match exactly what their parents prepared or with what they usually grew up with (and to be honest, how many times have we heard various people mention their mothers never shared their recipes to begin with? TV is filled with such examples, hence its 'injection' into Trek to probably make it more 'relatable' to the viewer - but that doesn't mean replicated food in Trek wouldn't taste the same).

Also, being accustomed to one type of produce (say 'fresh/organic') can easily create a psychosomatic effect where you knowingly switch to something else that is 'synthetic', you will automatically label it as 'inferior' because we live in a society which attributes almost anything 'synthetic' as 'inferior' or 'bad' (which of course is wrong - not everything synthetically made is bad or 'inferior' - to me it seems like this concept seeped into Trek through the writers) - similar to how people in real life say that 'organic' produce is better for you than conventional produce and some will go so far to say 'organic' tastes better.

Having tried both organic and conventionally grown produce, I can say I didn't notice any difference in taste or texture... except in the price - aka, organic produce was usually double in price (also, the notion that it's healthier is relatively bogus because 'organic farmers' can still use pesticides, they're just not obligated to disclose how much they're using [unlike conventionally grown produce] - and this type of info of organic being better in every aspect is usually spread by people who have little to no scientific background nor do they read peer-review studies).

This discussion has been going on for ages and to me its nonsense. It's all in the head of the few characters who mentioned it as far as I'm concerned. Replicated food is not 'inferior' nutritionally, texture or taste wise to the real thing.

 

[Christopher]

Spoiled 24th century folk complaining about their replicated food don't know how good they have it: if they were born after the burn they'd be back to eating shit.

That's what humans have always done. It's called fertilizer. Organic molecules return to the ecosystem and are incorporated into new plants, which are eaten by animals, etc. And naturally that's how it would work on a 24th-century starship too. It's a closed system -- all waste would have to be recycled back into useful forms. So it was quite silly for the admiral in that DSC episode to talk about it as if it were somehow unusual.

The technical manual isn't considered canon, so that wouldn't really apply.

Oh, come on. "Canon" is not religious gospel. It's just the onscreen stories. Which are artistic creations of human beings, including the human beings who wrote the Tech Manual, so it reflects the thought processes that went into the creation, even if what ended up in the final version was sometimes different. It's artificially limiting oneself to think only of the completed work of fiction and ignore the ideas and processes that went into its construction. The final fiction is not more "real" than the initial ideas, because no fiction is real. But the creative process that produced it is real, in our world, and so it's worth paying attention to. That's why DVDs have behind-the-scenes featurettes. It's not forbidden to think or talk about this stuff.

It has been mentioned that replicators convert energy into matter - hence the power expenditure (23rd and 32nd century replication however seems to be working along the lines of matter to matter conversion - which is one of the function of 24th century replicators as well, but energy to matter is seemingly mostly used in the 24th century probably due to relative abundance of energy - whereas the Burn could have prompted UFP to switch to less energy intensive measures due to scarcity of dilithium which would imply relative scarcity of energy as well - less dilithium means you cannot exactly replace them for focused M/AM reactions, which would prompt UFP to switch to different methods).

No way. The idea of matter/energy conversion in transporters and replicators is ridiculous. E = mc^2, so the amount of energy contained within a single gram of matter would be approximately the amount released by the Hiroshima bomb. I can't find the specific figures now, but a while back I calculated that creating a single sandwich out of pure energy would take something like twice (?) the annual energy output of the entire United States power grid. It's an utterly ridiculous idea. That's why Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda abandoned the stupid matter-to-energy conceit when they developed TNG tech and replaced it with the more credible idea that transporters and replicators simply rearrange existing matter. It's unfortunate that some of the show's writers have overlooked this and perpetuated the "matter-to-energy" myth.

Namely, dishes that certain crew members remember might not taste the same because the recipe in the replicator doesn't match exactly what their parents prepared or with what they usually grew up with (and to be honest, how many times have we heard various people mention their mothers never shared their recipes to begin with? TV is filled with such examples, hence its 'injection' into Trek to probably make it more 'relatable' to the viewer - but that doesn't mean replicated food in Trek wouldn't taste the same).

That's quite credible.

 

[Deks]

Oh, come on. "Canon" is not religious gospel. It's just the onscreen stories. Which are artistic creations of human beings, including the human beings who wrote the Tech Manual, so it reflects the thought processes that went into the creation, even if what ended up in the final version was sometimes different. It's artificially limiting oneself to think only of the completed work of fiction and ignore the ideas and processes that went into its construction. The final fiction is not more "real" than the initial ideas, because no fiction is real. But the creative process that produced it is real, in our world, and so it's worth paying attention to. That's why DVDs have behind-the-scenes featurettes. It's not forbidden to think or talk about this stuff.

Nothing to do with religion.
The technical manual is not considered part of canon same as pocket books aren't.
There are also numerous aspects between the TM and what we saw on-screen that simply speaking do not match.

No way. The idea of matter/energy conversion in transporters and replicators is ridiculous. E = mc^2, so the amount of energy contained within a single gram of matter would be approximately the amount released by the Hiroshima bomb. I can't find the specific figures now, but a while back I calculated that creating a single sandwich out of pure energy would take something like twice (?) the annual energy output of the entire United States power grid. It's an utterly ridiculous idea. That's why Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda abandoned the stupid matter-to-energy conceit when they developed TNG tech and replaced it with the more credible idea that transporters and replicators simply rearrange existing matter. It's unfortunate that some of the show's writers have overlooked this and perpetuated the "matter-to-energy" myth.

Let's see, its been stated on-screen by several characters in the 24th century (who should know how the technology works) that replicators convert energy into matter (not matter into matter although they also have that function).

I don't see an issue with this because M/AM reactions produce ridiculous amounts of energy, and 24th century UFP technology is also heavily subspace based... meaning that any and all outputs are greatly ENHANCED (by orders of magnitude) using subspace technology.
This is one of the reasons why it doesn't make sense a 24th century photon torpedo could/would only have 64 Megatons in yield according to the Technical Manual (because it doesn't mesh with visual representations and destruction that we saw - which was more often far greater than 64 Megatons)... but rather, even if it has 1.5kg of matter and 1.5kg of anti-matter which would NORMALLY result in 64 Megatons, it also has subspace technology inside which would amplify explosive effects well into Gigaton and possibly Teraton ranges.... so the 64 Megaton yield from TM would at best be 'base yield' which can be gotten with M/AM technology without subspace field effect, but nowhere near representative of its maximum yield when mixed with subspace fields (which are ALWAYS in use).

Same applies to phasers which we saw burrow into a planetary crust kilometers beneath the surface at a low yield in seconds or vaporizing a solidly frozen asteroid. Enterprise-D clearly demonstrated its phaser power output to be in the Gigaton range here, but the TM implies pitifully lower yields and energy output that simply speaking makes 0 sense.

USSR, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated had a yield of 50 megatons, (50 million tons of TNT). In its "final" form (i.e. with a depleted uranium tamper instead of one made of lead) it would have been 100 megatons.

If we can already make such destructive weapons, why would the UFP most used secondary weapon (aka Photon Torpedo), max out at 'maybe' 64 Megatons (or less) in the 24th century? Especially when there are Empires in Trek which don't care about keeping yields of their weapons low, and in fact want to increase destructive effects to massive degrees so they can take out enemies swiftly or create massive damage on a planetary scale instantly?
The UFP would be outclassed at every possible turn and it would have fallen a LONG time ago if they hadn't upgraded their own weapons destructive effects... but obviously, they don't go around using them for the purpose of destroying enemies... usually to disable as quickly as possible with minimal loss of life (deadly force is used as a last resort).

The TM is not canon because it ends up not meshing with on-screen dialogue on more occasions than it does (which is almost never).
Also, in order to bend space-time, implement vast plethora of technologies etc. UFP would indeed require massive power generation capabilities, or something similar which can then be greatly enhanced via use of subspace.

Furthermore, on-screen dialogue demonstrates in DS9 that generating a low level subspace field around a starship or a station (if a station can do that) can lower its inertial mass to practically nothing, allowing an object to accelerate greatly (its also one of the reasons why Trek capital ships can move like fighter crafts and can achieve velocities of AT LEAST 75 000 km/s at minimum).

On-screen data points to UFP using a great deal of field manipulation (subspace technology) to get astonishing results (far surpassing those found in the technical manual - which, again, I just don't see as part of canon because it cannot reconcile most of what we saw).

 

[Christopher]

The technical manual is not considered part of canon same as pocket books aren't.

I'm one of the Pocket authors. I certainly don't need you to mansplain my own job to me. The point is that it's narrow-minded to think that canon is the only thing worth talking about, that any mention of anything non-canonical needs to be shot down and discredited as a matter of reflex. That's childish gatekeeping and it doesn't benefit any kind of intelligent discussion of a work of fiction.

There are also numerous aspects between the TM and what we saw on-screen that simply speaking do not match.

This is also obvious, but again, the point is not about whether it's factually true, but whether it matters. Discussing fiction is not exclusively about what the onscreen facts are. That's the most superficial, least important level of analysis. We're allowed to talk about the creative process and the various differing ideas that go into the creation of a work. We're not required to blindly defend everything that appears onscreen. We're entitled to say that what appeared onscreen was imperfect and flawed, that some of the writers regrettably misunderstood the intentions of the technical advisers and thus what ended up onscreen made less sense and is less worthy of our respect than what's in the tech manuals.

Let's see, its been stated on-screen by several characters in the 24th century (who should know how the technology works) that replicators convert energy into matter (not matter into matter although they also have that function).

Again, this is obvious and you're wasting both our time by thinking it needs to be asserted. The point is that it makes no sense to say it works that way. It's stupid and implausible and we have every right to ignore it, because fiction is just made up and we don't have to take every damn word of it literally.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Maybe human psychology plays a role in this, but on the other side it also seems that characters who apparently aren't able to discern any differences or are fine with most of the replicated food have one or two dishes they prefer to be unreplicated, like caviar for Picard in "Sins Of The Father" for example.

I can see the point that replicated food should be perfect (at least in the 24th century), especially for the physical reasons that @Christopher pointed at, but could there be other technical issues that could make replicated food inferior beside the monotony of always eating identical food or the taste being changed for health reasons?

 

[Unicron]

At no point in this conversation have I been talking about "Gene." The concept of a post-scarcity economy has an existence well beyond Star Trek. Hell, my whole point is that Star Trek's producers failed to engage with the ramifications of a post-scarcity system as well as other science fiction and futurism have done over the years, because of what was referenced earlier about the producers not liking how replicators changed things from what they were used to. Change from what we're used to is what science fiction should embrace, not retreat from.

That might be the case with the concept of post-scarcity, and I agree with you it's one of those things Trek has never done all that well. But from the perspective of creating and story-building, my point is the main complaints with replicators came from the feeling that they were taking away from that. Not that I entirely agree with those complaints, just that I understand them as I said before.

It's kind of like saying the next Trek series that gets made will keep aspects like exploration and development, but the new hero ship will have the best technology and our crew can go from the Alpha to the Delta quadrant in a much shorter time. Our sickbays will use some of the Borg tech Voyager explored so we can resurrect the redshirts, or at least the more plot-important characters.

Or how the Discovery was originally intended to be in service a mere decade before TOS, and has a highly experimental spore drive that functions a lot better (when it works anyway) than the technology we see a century or more afterward. And speaking only for myself, it's one of the things I've come to dislike in application.

Don't be ridiculous. That's not a "replica" of Leonardo any more than a painting of him would be. It doesn't have Leonardo's consciousness, it's just an animated character impersonating him.

Not only that, but you're positing that I'm saying the exact opposite of what I'm actually saying, which is that an identical copy is not as valuable because it's not the original object that was directly created by the original artist or involved in the original historical events.

Then perhaps you can clarify for me. If we're to assume the holodeck can recreate any historical figures with a high degree of accuracy, as we've seen dozens of times, then at what point do these versions have the capacity for consciousness and self-awareness? The latter has seemed somewhat easier than the former, in some episodes.

And even assuming they aren't really conscious in the utmost sense, why does it matter when our holo-Leonardo has all the necessary knowledge and skills to do what his living counterpart did?

To return to the cloning example, the Klingon monks at Boreth decided to clone Kahlless in a bid for power. And while the dialogue in that episode raises some questions about how "accurate" this Kahless is (as his knowledge and memories were programmed by the monks, going off written records), no one seems to question that he's sentient, intelligent, or that he has the capacity to effectively be a new Kahless. That's why Gowron fears his influence, more than anything else, and why he ultimately agrees to share power. Because Worf points out that even in a symbolic way, a living Kahless is a very powerful image to many Klingons.

The Dominion also cloned Weyoun a number of times, and there's no indication that each version was "less" than the last one. The only clone that differed was the one who tried to defect.

Because you're trapped by the assumption that value is about physical material rather than meaning and historical context. You still think I'm talking about monetary value, when my whole point is that that is not how a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society would define value.

* shrugs *

No, I'm saying that if your earlier post that the real "value" of replicated material is the information, not so much the physical aspect (which I agree with, to some extent) is correct, then a holo-Leonardo is not an "inferior" copy who's just "pretending" to have the information and skills he's been given. He has those qualities by design, and is every bit as capable as the original. He can produce works that are just as good, because all of the essential information is intact. His paintings and creations aren't going to be "less" skilled than what the real Leonardo did, even if the circumstances of how and when they're made are different.. The only thing that's really changed in this equation is the physical substance, and I'd say that's rather debatable when the hologram can be made to be as physically realistic as possible.

I'm also talking about the possibility of worlds and governments that don't operate the way post-scarcity Earth or other Federation worlds are supposed to function in Trek. Because from my perspective, both in terms of watching and creating ideas, there's a limit to how far technology can be pushed before it takes over areas of development it shouldn't. Because that incarnation of Earth, in some contexts, is fairly boring and I don't want "too perfect" humans.

 

[cooleddie74]

Eh, I don't buy that just because Federation citizens have "government-supplied replicators"(still not sure if that's true since we never see the delivery process, who gives you a replicator and how you get one if you want one) that you'll eat what Federation scientists and nutritionists want you to. That's a form of food authoritarianism that doesn't jibe with the freedoms and liberty of choice we see in the Federation in the franchise.

Raffi probably has a replicator in her trailer in the middle of the desert but she clearly doesn't take very good care of herself nor eat the best diet based on what we've seen, and no Federation official has beamed out to her location to make her change her diet.

 

[Gov Kodos]

There is no objective taste to anything. The computer running the replicator has only an idea of what anything tastes like.

 

[cooleddie74]

Proteins are resequenced to a close approximation of what chemical analysis tells us a food tastes like. Replicators just happen to get the "real" tastes closer to right most of the time than wrong.

 

[cooleddie74]

In fact, Sonny Clemmonds said his replicated martini was the best he'd ever tasted, and the last he'd tasted before that episode was a "real" one he drank either in 1994 or before then. So clearly replicators get some foods not only right but top the "real" thing depending on the individual ordering.

 

[Captain Crow]

Maybe the brand and quality of the replicator might play a part in food being off.

An el cheapo Mr. Thrifty Rep-Lo-Matic 9000 makes food whose color and texture are off and has a faint taste of pennies. An industrial one (type used for school, hospital, and starship crew meals) makes passable-ish food. A high end Cuisinart Le Chef makes almost indistinguishable from the real thing food.

 

[Unimatrix Q]

Maybe the brand and quality of the replicator might play a part in food being off.

An el cheapo Mr. Thrifty Rep-Lo-Matic 9000 makes food whose color and texture are off and has a faint taste of pennies. An industrial one (type used for school, hospital, and starship crew meals) makes passable-ish food. A high end Cuisinart Le Chef makes almost indistinguishable from the real thing food.

Yep, especially DS9, Star Trek Picard and Lower Decks implied something like this.

 

[UssGlenn]

Eh, I don't buy that just because Federation citizens have "government-supplied replicators"(still not sure if that's true since we never see the delivery process, who gives you a replicator and how you get one if you want one) that you'll eat what Federation scientists and nutritionists want you to. That's a form of food authoritarianism that doesn't jibe with the freedoms and liberty of choice we see in the Federation in the franchise.

Raffi probably has a replicator in her trailer in the middle of the desert but she clearly doesn't take very good care of herself nor eat the best diet based on what we've seen, and no Federation official has beamed out to her location to make her change her diet.

I'm aware it a bit of a dystopian take on the federation, I was annoyed yesterday when I couldn't sort some data by date in an app, and it made me think about how they keep removing customization options from software, to make it simpler to use.

Also I don't remember getting a sense of Raffi's diet, but I haven't watched that scene in a while. She certainly doesn't look unhealthy, and is a healthy weight. Her replicator automatically giving her healthy Doritos and Mountain Dew would help with that.