Flavor (as well as texture and aroma) is the whole point of cooking (otherwise, Soylent). Formatting is not the point of programming.

I'd say nourishment is the whole point of cooking. The advent of cooking made more foods digestable to our intestines and other foods less risky.

Flavour, texture and aroma are learned appreciations, and are not universal. So I think the comparison with code style is quite apt.

No, nourishment is just the bare essentials of cooking. In fact, we have a very large problem, literally and figuratively, because we often don't care about the nourishment. Consider junk foods and others that we call "empty calories" because they have no real nutritional value.

My point being that I don't really see the persuasive value of the analogy. It's a false-equivalence. The point was that yes many people often care deeply about the formatting of the code (myself included), but discussions around formatting are almost always a form of bike-shedding. A better analogy would be "randomly selecting the restaurant doesn't always lead you to your favorite place, but at least it prevents the interminable discussions about where to go."

I think a better analogy is that having a free cafe ends those interminable discussions about where to go to lunch each day.

So you're arguing we should continue arguing about code formatting, esp. during a code review?

I disagree with the comparison, but go ahead with it, what's your point?

Well that's not a very good point.