TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

Something that I find very cool about our present day food science is that even though we know so much, there's still an incredible amount we don't understand.

Soy sauce is a good example — brewing of it using traditional methods involves fermenting in large barrels over the course of many months. There aren't many places that still make it that way nowadays — most use chemical hydrolysation to cut the process down to a few days. The taste of the traditionally made stuff is much better, but it's expensive enough that I can't justify buying it. I am glad I bought a bottle and got to try it, but in most cooking contexts, it's not really worth using because the nuances of its flavour will be lost or overpowered in the process. I used it sparingly, and I relished it in those contexts, but I also needed to make sure I wasn't too reticent in using it, lest I lose it to time. Since finishing the one bottle I had, I haven't bought another one (though I've been tempted).

I like your speculation about nutrition, but I find the idea of replicated food being nutritionally complete to be too implausible to believe. After all, sci-fi works best when it builds on top of established science, and the taste of food is so intrinsically linked to its chemistry that I can't imagine replicated food being able to even approximate the taste of things without being faithful to the underlying chemistry. I agree that the taste is likely only an approximation, but I imagine that for most people, this is good enough — just like most people would find a £30 bottle of soy sauce absurd.

In the 2300s, we have Joseph Sisko; today, we have Yasuo Yamamoto. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, eh?