Agreed. You have to remember that UA is a US airline trying to cater to an international audience. Reasonably it chooses to cater principally for US tastes as half, or more than half, of its customers are from the US and the others are from all over the place. So it focuses on large portion sizes and robust and sweet flavors. But a good proportion of its US clientele consider their palates more sophisticated and don’t like that style. That’s why they prefer the catering on foreign airlines.

However you won’t find many Germans singing the praises of the food on LH, for example, or Hong Kongers on CX and that’s for the same reason.

A good example would be the Chobani yogurt for breakfast. It is not the cheapest brand, so its choice is not about saving money, but the flavor they choose is heavily sweetened. I suspect many of their customers would prefer it plain but that would take UA away from catering for US tastes.

Of course they could spend more, of course they could work harder on obtaining standardised product from catering facilities around the world, of course they could train their FAs better but they are still left with the question of for whose tastes they are catering.