This isn't a typical article but more just some explanation on a mindset. The replicators in Star Trek are one of the most wasteful scientific advances present on ships. These devices take massive amounts of energy and convert them into matter according to patterns stored in the replicators computer system. This is incredibly wasteful when there is a far more effective and efficient way to produce foods.
Matter / Energy Conversion
<math>E=mc^2</math> Einstein's famous equation gives the idea that matter and energy are interchangeable but it also gives an indicator of how much actual energy it would take to produce matter. But to the laws of the conservation of matter and energy, it is also known that you basically can't get something from nothing. If you've got a bunch of mass coming out you've got to put in the energy (or mass) to begin with.
Energy Requirements
Lets take a simple example: 1 cup of sugar.
Now bakers can say without reservation how much of the prepared foods we eat require 1 cup of sugar, or more. Some foods require a lot more than one cup, but we'll stick with one cup because it is so common. How much energy would be required to make this cup of sugar?
<math>1 cup=200 g=1.798\cdot 10^{16}kg m^2/s^2=1.798\cdot 10^{10} MJ</math>
So, there it is, 17,890,000,000 Megajouls of energy. So how much energy is that? That is about equivalent to 4.296 Megatons of TNT. To put that into perspective, we measure nuclear bombs in the same way, so the bomb the was dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, so by comparison it would take the energy released by a little over 286 such detonations. For a single cup of sugar. To say nothing for the fact that in any system, there is energy loss (perfect energy transfer doesn't exist) something has to power the replicator and provide the energy to produce the mass. Thus, it would actually be more (how much more is impossible to figure, since the technology doesn't exist).
Growing Food
On most ships in the Trek universe we see references to emergency rations and pretty much everything else is replicated. The only exception to that is Voyager, where the writers realized (or it was just better thematically) that growing ones own food would save a whole ass-ton of power from the ships power systems.