Two reasons, actually.
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It’s not their preferred preparation. All the replicated food is based on a pattern from an original recipe. It’s not adding flair or anything, it’s literally a copy of a dish made who knows how long ago. And that’s where the next reason comes from:
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Imagine eating some spicy pepper dish from, like, the 1940’s vs the same dish made today with spicer peppers. It wouldn’t be as spicy eating something that wasn’t, at the time, really selectively bred to be more spicy. If the recipe for the replicator is, like, hundreds of years old it would probably not be as potent as the same dish made with real ingredients.
I can imagine that the characters that have expressed disdain for replicated food probably get hit by both of these. It’s not the way they would preferred it to be made, and it’s also like eating vegetable jello salad in 2024.
Digging the sepia tone.
heh, I searched for Migleemo regurgitated soup, and that was the first image that came up, and I kind of liked it
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.
There’s no technological reason why there couldn’t be hundreds of versions of each exact dish. In fact they could’ve even had a simple variation program so that every time it’s made it comes out a bit different
I mean, that is conjecture right? With how much the real military puts into food science, I could imagine that there’s a Federation food science division that could easily make a dish from scratch a number of times and store each attempt’s pattern as a random variation that gets distributed out to the fleet.
When I was in, they put zero thought into it other than “needs more calories” and “make soldiers poop less.”
Considering a post-scarcity universe where the machines they’re working with can take even those considerations away from us (IIRC the replicators automatically do adjust nutrients/calories per-person per-meal). I think after a while, someone would’ve just… Gotten bored and futzed with it. I’d also assume consumers on earth to contribute to the databases. Heck, there could be a whole food influencer culture thing going on. “Oh man, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried ‘eggs, scrambled, variant 37578a’!”
I think we have something contemporary to compare this sci-fi scenario with: recorded vs. live music (especially now that we can keep making exact digital duplicates as nauseam.)
When you play a CD, it sounds the same each time (ignoring things like the equipment you’re playing through, the room, the ambient noise, etc.). Usually, the studio recording is the best, most pristine recording of a song you can get.
But when you see the original artist performing the song live, it’s different! A good performer will make you feel like you’re experiencing something special. And the little variations, and even, imperfections, make the song even more compelling!
It’s the CD recording of the song bad? No. It’s perfectly serviceable. It might even contain things that can’t be performed live. But it’s the same each time. And for some people, that makes it less desirable, and live performances, with all their deviations and mistakes become more desirable.
And going back to replicated food, apart from Eddington and grandpa Sisko, I don’t remember anyone else saying replicated food was bad. Just less desirable. And even Eddington grudgingly admitted that the TV dîner he was eating in the shuttle with Sisko wasn’t that bad.
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.
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.
Replicated pasta is starch gluten and water.
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
So it’s like Vinyl vs mp3 but for food?
Analog vs digital
I’m guessing the “fidelity” in how accurately they copy the food is down to storage space (like, they’d need what is essentially a transporter pattern buffer for each food to copy it perfectly). So replicators are the food equivalent of mp3s at like 192kbps.
Interestingly, vinyl players applied a standard “reconstruction” filter into the low fidelity sound waves you can store on the disks. When CDs were created, there was no such filter, and a lot of studios did lots of stupid things, from using the exact same signal they stored on vinyl to playing with post-processing filters to get the most different sound possible.
So yeah, a lot of time vinyl was really measurably better than CDs.
According to Lower Decks, the replicators accessible to the junior officers have fewer (and worse?) recipes than the ones for the senior officers.
Yeah, that’s true. Could be that only senior officers can program recipes, or maybe the Cerritos has special rules. They were under heightened security after the Pakled attacks, and also, considering the Buffer Time episode, Captain Freeman is definitely the kind of captain that would make rules about that. And the Cerritos seems like the kind of crew that would need them lol
Welp, that’s my new head canon now. The rules were made after a noodle incident [warning: TVTropes link] involving literal noodles (or maybe gagh).
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.
There could be hundreds of versions of each individual dish.
Not just could be. We know there are. In the first episode or two episode of Voyager, Tom tries to order tomato soup from the replicator, and it asks him a ton of questions because there are like a hundred different versions of tomato soup, including Bolian style, meaning not only are recipes kept modern, they even include alien takes on other species’ meals! I wonder if Klingon replicators can make Rhaktajino DS9 style
I would say yes to the Raktajino but I don’t think Klingons like tequila.
I bet if he were sufficiently motivated Scotty could just beam your heart directly out of your chest.
And Bones could probably catch it and slap it into a transplant recipient before it finished a second beat.
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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.
<will it pass muster to be aboard the ship in the first place? Starfleet has standards, after all.>
I was under the impression that crewman are free to add new things. Like Data, who composed food for Spot and I believe there were several instances of tinkering with the replicators on VOY and DS9. Although DS9 maybe is the odd one out, since it’s , ex-kardassian and co-owned by Bajor, and a certain ferengi runs a bar there. ^^
Which is why I would assume the replicators and, by extention, the main computer can allow for “Corned beef hash O’Brien the way me Ma used to make it Tango 3.”
yep. and the idea the computer wouldnt have everyones personal tweaks built right in on demand based on who asked is silly.
They can probably upload all their own recipes from a Padd anywhere they go
"Share and enjoy!’
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
It’s not even a theory, really. Troi had to argue with the computer to get a chocolate sundae in one early episode.
Computer, hot fudge sundae with a side of ozempic dammit
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”
Raktajino, extra strong, extra sweet
Jamaican blend, double strong, double sweet
They do order modded food in DS9 as well. Bashir orders Soup, but with basil.
I think I recall it in lower decks too.
I do enjoy the implication that lower decks had where all food products have to have their temperature specified.
“Birthday cake with lit candles, various temperatures”
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.
There are probably a near infinite number of downloadable recipes, and you can program in new or altered ones.
Yes. One of the complaints Paris had about the Voyager replicators is that his preferences weren’t synced to the ship yet, so he had to manually pick what variety of tomato soup he wanted (the horror).
“Gimme a noodle bowl of a variant i never tried before. As allways, make it on the spicy side. Hot. If one doesn’t exist, smash together gordon ramsey, anthony bourdain and some random vulcan cooks in a simulation and whip up a few innovative, new ones.” Would be my go-to.
One would imagine every single, good recepie from the internet is going to exist in the replicator database. And it’s gonna know what is popular and what is not. One would imagine there being stuff in there that is almost impossible to cook yourself and stuff made by centuries of food scientists. Synthetic stuff and stuff from history. Wanna try bland potatoe stew from the 15th century or rare wompa-lompa steak?
The people complaining have poor imagination or are horrible at interacting with the computer. You can try human meat with black pepper if you are so inclined. Without prion disease too!
Vulcan cooks are probably a bad bet if you’re looking for something spicy.
They’re from a desert planet, if any comparison can be made to humans, they’re probably great at making spicy food. On Earth, it seems like all of the best spicy food is either from desert regions or tropical forests.
The Vulkans, Klingons, and Romulans all probably have great spicy food.
I dunno, when Neelix made the soup spicy Tuvok thought it was too spicy.
An outlier?
I can’t remember if I saw it online or if it was just something my friends and I were talking about, but it was a theory that Vulcans probably use stupidly spicy food while training to control their emotions.
In short “It’s good, but it’s not the same as my mother makes it…”
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.
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.
