So wanting the ‘real’ thing may be part placebo, and part wanting to experience the random imperfections of a natural product.

When you cook, you get to smell the smell of the food cooking and have a period of anticipation beforehand. Similarly when you go to a restaurant, you smell the smells of the restaurant and the food they make. With replicators, you don't get those experiences because the food springs into existence fully cooked and hot mere seconds before you start eating it. And I can imagine it feeling pretty sterile. Like it was made in a factory rather than a kitchen. Like a microwave dinner is ready in 4 minutes and you kindof get your first whiff of it and the first feeling of the steam rising off of it into your face when it first comes out of the microwave. (It hardly has a smell when frozen.) Kindof a "has everything the body needs" kind of thing but with none of the other elements that make it the sort of experience that eating should be. So, yeah. I think the MRE analogy is a good one.