Data no!

That is also something I wonder about. Most people don’t seem to care if it’s real or replicated, but the people who do care, are very adamant about something being different in replicated food.

I doubt I would notice. I mean, I don’t find processed food disgusting compared to fresh all natural stuff. I’ll pretty much eat anything other than broccoli and cauliflower. 🤷🏻‍♂️

https://xkcd.com/2570/

I was going to say prune juice. Natural fruits and things - tastes, texture, cultivars, etc, change over time. “Peak” banana is the Cavendish, but peak banana taste was from the now extinct Big Mike cultivar. So it’s curious to think how the current plum and pune has faired all the way out to Worf glass.

Bananas… https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/why-dont-banana-candies-taste-like-real-bananas/

Also kinda curious to know what Riker’s scrambled eggs tasted like in that one episode where nobody but Worf could tolerate his cooking.

I think that was less “Riker can’t cook” and more “hey I got some random eggs from an alien planet but surely they must be a suitable substitute for Earth chicken eggs and hey why are you all gagging on my omelette?”

I think people will experiment like crazy. Think about Miles and his scotch flavored gum. Now imagine that with any flavor. Someone like Deanna could make literally all of her food taste like chocolate if she prefers. The replicator could just add the right macro nutrients and vitamins and she’d be good to go.

There’s some Japanese inventor/scientist that made a “taste-o-vision” thingy. It basically has synthetic flavors on some kind of medium that you lick. But not like “I put blue raspberry in mine;” it has “pixels” for lack of a better word that you can adjust electronically for the flavor you want to experience. IDK how it works exactly, but the concept sounds pretty rad. I’d want it for when watching cooking shows; get to taste what they make 🤤

I’ve also seen ads recently for a vape replacement that’s just a tube with a piece of cotton wicked in some kind of flavor liquid, so you can inhale flavored air. That one seems weird to me, but also maybe I’ll get one? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Or even specific types of replicators themselves producing food with a specific “flavor” bias?

In DS9 - ”Blaze of Glory”, Eddington complained to Sisko that replicated food tasted, to him, like synthesized protein molecules— that, regardless of the dish, it just tasted like synthesized protein to him after having grown and eaten his own farm-fresh food while living on a Maquis colony.

While he was probably exaggerating a little bit, Sisko seemed to agree a bit, too, and is also known for growing and cooking at least some of his own food on occasion, not to mention having grown up in a restaurant run by his father on Earth that serves real food.

As we’ve seen throughout Trek, not all replicators are created equal. Sometimes, even on Starfleet ships and facilities, we see differences in performance and capability. Perhaps those on Galaxy-class starships are more fancy than those in a Starfleet runabout? We know from endless complaints that those on DS9 were pretty mediocre except for the upgraded ones in Quark’s Bar (which also served real food, btw).

I started to think maybe “leola” was just his word for “edible.”

I kinda wonder if those were even just fully props, or are actually some kind of real fruit/treat thing. It kinda looks like a sugar cane type candy/treat I’ve seen pictures of, but big.

I imagined those as a dense fruit roll-up, but maybe a bit tangier.

Talk about two polar opposite choices. Unless you’re talking Neelix’s plomeek soup that he jazzed up for Tuvok?

Only because Jake thought it was delicious before he knew what it was.

Ferengi appear to have revolting taste, but, as servers to the galaxy, I kinda trust them to know what is actually delicious. Or, at least, to know what I might like.