Food

Food in the Universal Century is, first and foremost, a class signifier. The access you have to diverse and flavorful food has less to do with geography, simply because almost everywhere has the bulk of its food shipped from somewhere (usually, but not always, the Republic of East Asia) and the radical climate change associated with Second Impact has shuffled up where-what-grows anyway.

Colonial food technology could theoretically feed the world dozens of times over, were the colonies not subject to a food production cap of 60% of what it would take to feed a population of their size and subtly nudged into producing enormous monocultures in sub-modules (colloquially, "food balls") to further increase that arbitrary interdependence. Good luck getting it passed in the Federation Assembly, though.

Ready-to-eat food tends to be blander, off the shelf, than 21st century food. Food that took less than 20 minutes to prepare probably has all the negative things you associate with instant food in real life. Accordingly, cooking-related professions enjoy somewhat higher prestige than in real life (even if it doesn't come with much of a pay bump...); it's a proud profession!

Vending machines are common, especially aboard ships, and much moreso for hot food (and, more generally, full meals) than is common in the West today.

Perhaps surprisingly, meat has become more ubiquitous and generally tastes better than in the modern era. There is virtually no supply chain reason to rear meat on Earth, so it is reared in space; there is also virtually no supply chain reason not to pair meat-rearing agricultural pods with pods that grow things you would include in boutique livestock diets (olives for olive wagyu, for instance), so meat tends to be, if not universally the tastiest possible version of itself, certainly better on average.