Two reasons, actually.

  1. 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:

  2. 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.

  • Beacon@fedia.io
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    13 hours ago

    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.

    • Infynis
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      12 hours ago

      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

    • bizarroland@fedia.io
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      12 hours ago

      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.