>You could also have a look at the foodpackets the military or NASA uses
Worth pointing out that military field rations like MREs aren't actually that cost efficient as a day to day meal. Despite their lowest government bidder appearance and taste, they aren't designed to be "cheap soldier food." Soldiers on bases eat in mess halls.
Field rations aren't *military* food, they're *field* food, designed to be eaten in combat or in a remote place. The primary drive behind their design is the ability to eat a whole meal out of the box without any support equipment- no refrigeration, no stoves, no microwaves, only the single-use flameless chemical heater that came in the box, hence "Meal, Ready to Eat." The second concern behind them is long shelf life, and cutting costs only comes after those requirements have been met. You can look up how much even generic, non-military MRE type rations cost, they really aren't cheap. And obviously all that goes even more for astronaut food; you can be guaranteed that the stuff in OP's pic costs more than its equivalent in McDonald's hamburgers.
So, field ration or compact astronaut type meals are a great pick if you're stabbing people in the jungle in a South American country or if you're a Battlemech pilot on a long dropship journey or a scavenger girl on a desert planet where most food comes from offworld and only every so often, but regular Joe Schmoe VR hacker in Neo Jakarta or whatever is probably gonna be eating street food or in some megacorp fast food joint.
Of course, it's all just on the sliding scale of realism to aesthetic. If you think everybody eating freeze dried food in little packets is grimy and cool then go for it, because it totally can be.
I bring that up both because it might be nice to get a vibe for that kind of stuff if you're looking into it, but also because he exhibits the kind of enthusiasm that I think is important to note no matter what direction you wanna go with a setting. Soldiers complaining about "look at the nasty-ass rations the government's making us eat" is a common trope, but that's because those are good down-home country boys who grew up on nice home cooked meals and are now being made to eat shitty military rations.
"Good food" is relative. Do you remember when you were in middle school and you just couldn't wait for Wednesday because that was burrito day, you were looking forward to one of those school cafeteria burritos instead of this nasty-ass Monday spaghetti. And yet if I served that shit to you now you'd look at me like I was crazy, but you didn't know better then.
Just like average people today have strong opinions about their favorite fast food joint, people in a cyberpunk setting will have strong positive and negative emotions toward their shitty cyberpunk food. Imagine some corporate wage-slave being pissed off because he came home from 30 hours at work and the store was out of Makiguchi Brand vacuum-sealed meal packets and they only had Super-Yum Brand and he hates Super-Yum Brand they're fucking gross. Or there's a crowd because Wu Yi AgriGroup is re-introducing their freeze-dried imitation beef meals, everybody loves those, but there's only a limited amount available and everybody's trying to buy them up before they run out.
Just something to think about.
Kayden Howard
I remember making up a campaign setting where people didn't eat or drink, they just did different "Nutri drugs" which weren't even branded very friendly they were like literally powder you snorted to keep you alive. Actual food had been long forgotten due to all plant and animal life besides humans dying, everything was synthetic, the only people who actually ate anything was a cannibal cult of the poorest members of society who lived on the ground.
Ian Barnes
Every home and apartment block is equipped with a sort of food synthesizer. Usually the size of a microwave, and pulling from a tank of 'organic matter', it can make a preset number of meals of protein, carbohydrates, fats, and vitamins in about 5 minutes. Lower class apartment blocks are stuck with synthesizers that can produce bricks of food that manage to taste like nothing, while upper class homes can produce entire banquets with a few button presses.
These synthesizers are sold be big megacorps that have some branch specialized in home appliances, and sell their own formulas of 'organic matter' to fill their machines. The quality of this matter is what determines the quality of the food produced, and the machine's memory capacity determines what sort of complex dishes it can make.
Basically if you're wageslave or below, you can basically look forward to getting three square meals of edible blocks.
Jace Gomez
So, looks like it's Soyberpunk?
Nicholas Clark
So, have you guys heard of these indoor hydroponic farms that grow food with optimised LED light?
Bentley Cook
Please that's implying wageslaves can afford LED lights.
