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"It's a single-celled protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs."
Dozer, The Matrix

"I was there, I can prove it! When I was a kid, you could buy meat anywhere! Eggs they had, real butter! Not this... crap!"
Sol, Soylent Green

Nestor 1: (eating a hot dog for the first time) There's no dog in this.
Cowboy: Uh-uh.
Nestor 1: Hydrolyzed vegetable protein, soybean meal, niacin, dextrose, and sodium nitrate flavoring.
Cowboy: Yup, that's what we call "meat" back home.

"The Food of the Future!" said Gneelicks proudly. "Chlorella algae."
Buster spat out his mouthful. "WHAT! You're serving us pond scum?"
"Pre-liquefied and ready to digest, with just a pinch of penicillin as growth stimulant! We don't have the climate for the farming and grazing methods of the north, you know. You can also have high-protein yeast grown on a substrate of sawdust and agricultural waste, or chicken off that humungous lump of tissue they've been bathing in nutrients for the past forty years. For dessert there's ice cream made from coal mined in the Prince Charles Mountains, and after-dinner sweets created from recycled paper underwear."

Dirk Moeller came from a long line of carnivores and proudly ate animal flesh at every meal. Most people didn't do that anymore, and when they did eat meat, they picked out a tube of vatted meat product made from cultivated tissue that never required the butchering of an animal, or even the participation of any sort of animal outside of the purely mythical. The best selling vatted meat product on the market was something called Kingston's Bison-Boar, some godforsaken agglomeration of bovine and pig genes stretched across a cartilaginous scaffolding and immersed in a nutrient broth until it grew into something that was meat-like without being meaty, paler than veal, lean as a lizard, and so animal-friendly that even strict vegetarians didn't mind tucking in a Bison-Boar burger or two when the mood struck them.

She still remembered the tart, crisp taste of her first apple. A real one, not a soysub. The way her blue eyes widened at the unfamiliar, mouth-puckering taste had delighted Adam.

Kreig: This is a perfect orange. Perfectly round, perfectly fresh, and perfectly... Well, perfectly orange. Fulfilling the government's suggested daily requirement for a natural Vitamin C supplement perfectly.
O'Neil: That's not a supplement. That's an orange, the real deal.
Kreig: That's my point. It's not.
O'Neil: Then what is it?
Kreig: It's a chemically engineered, hydroponically grown citrus-like replacement food. I mean, just once I would like it bruised or not quite ripe. Something, anything. Make it taste real!
O'Neil: It's just breakfast, Krieg. Try the egg product.
Kreig: But they're not eggs. No cholesterol, no fat. And no chickens. No chickens! This boat never has to stop by a grocery store. The crew's menu is created in the lab out of altered DNA and chemical pies. The ice cream has a half-life of 1,400 years. I mean, who knows what this stuff is doing to us?
O'Neil: I like it.
Kreig: Oh, yeah? Then where's your breakfast?
O'Neil: I just got off watch. This is dinner.
Kreig: No. No, this is a freeze-dried protein patty, a lookalike beef product.
O'Neil: Raising cattle was outlawed because their methane gas was deteriorating the ozone.
Kreig: So some cow passes air, and I can't eat a cheeseburger?
SeaQuest DSV, "Whale Song"

Janeway had no intention of hiring Nee'Lix to take over the Commissary. These extraterrans had strange ideas of cuisine: meat from animals instead of synthetic food vats, and unprocessed fruit with the seeds still in them!

"Eat recycled food. It's good for the environment and okay for you."
Servo-Droid, Judge Dredd

Osyraa: (tastes a replicated apple) Hmm. It doesn’t quite taste like the real thing, does it?
Admiral Vance: I’ve never eaten a real apple.
Osyraa: Well, how sad. Apples are a thing of beauty. You want to talk about oppression, you should start in your own mess hall.
Vance: It’s made of our shit, you know. (Osyraa spits out the apple she was eating) That’s the base material that we use in our replicators. We deconstruct it to the atomic level and then reform the atoms. (eats another apple) It’s pretty good for shit, and we don’t have to commit atrocities for it.
Star Trek: Discovery, "There Is a Tide..."

Jet: Miss! The popcorn-shrimp; is it shrimp-shrimp or fake-shrimp?
Waitress: It's an algae-soy hybrid.
Jet: Okay, we'll just get the potato skins; and you still have that two-for-one deal?
Waitress: With a coupon.
Jet: Okay, two rib-eye dinners.
Spike: Are you sure it's real and not an algae-soy hybrid?
"It is common for those accustomed to synthetic foods to be repulsed by eating an animal carcass. Remember that humans survived this way for millennia. You can too."

"I have zero interest in food. If it were feasible, my diet would consist entirely of flavorless beige smoothies containing all the nutrients required by the human animal."
Captain Holt, Brooklyn Nine-Nine


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