Spacelines from the Far Out

There's also an achievement for serving 200 meals. Is it possible that the requirements for this achievement and that one are switched? I feel like I unlocked the 200 meal achievement super early, possibly when I hit 50 meals served, so I immediately imagined these two were just reversed.

Also, I think it's correct that you won't get credit when you already have 5 stars. It's possible this only counts when you serve someone who is in want of something. The idea SHOULD be that they're in want of food (and it will then also affect the overall customer satisfaction), but them being in want of entertainment might also work, as the method of force-feeding people who want entertainment seems to work (which is the current top solution/guide).

Another reason why I think this might be 200 meals is that I just did a run serving 16 meals, and my tracker went up about 7%, and 7% of 200 is 14. - Slight margin of error for a wonky tracker or me not giving every meal to someone 'in need'. But pretty close.

Its super bugged - BUT if you cook doing tutorial it counts toward both chievos - at least it did for me - AND it counted faster on the number of meals - 5 tutorial played with max attention on cooking at they will pop!

I think it may be giving them the food before it becomes obvious. When they first get hungry. The bar will be blue. I am doing it in co-op local and it is going faster. Thank you for the guide! Thumbs up from me!

Update: It started slowing down at 91%. I am at 93%.

Thanks for chiming in!
I’ve had varying success with different methods over the past couple days. I agree it definitely feels like feeding them while they’re still blue is correct. It also feels like the number needed for the achievement is way more than 50.. I only get 1-2% per trip, depending on the number of meals prepared and delivered. 4 meals is about 1% and 8+ is usually 2%. Very glitchy all around though.

When you cook food, sometimes it's tea, sometimes it's a piece of chicken, and sometimes you find more elaborate food like a piece of nigiri. Maybe it only works with a specific type of food?

Maybe depending on the race of the alien you have to give it a specific type of food?

That's actually a pretty great idea!

So I tried a few things to figure out what the conditions were, but ultimately gave up deciphering the specifics when I found a method that was giving me 4% to 8% per run while grinding out cosmetics. I would wait until passengers started having needs other than wanting food and then I would start giving them food instead of meeting their needs. By the time I cleared out my food stores doing this, I would get a variable amount of progress but it was consistently over 4% all the way to unlocking the achievement. Hope this info can speed things up for people or help people figure out the specifics of the achievement.

Based on the observation of iceman368, they maybe have a typi in the description and it should say 500? But still it‘s very odd why it sometimes counts and sometimes it doesn‘t. I can‘t reliably get the tracker to go up. I have sometimes multiple routes where it doesn‘t go up at all, even with a lot of meals cooked

I can confirm that this won't count if you have a 5 stars. What I did was make sure I lose a couple stars then have the upgraded fridge with 16 meals, you can always just buy the first $400 ship that comes with this. Then force feed your passengers until all the meals are gone. If you arrive at the destination too soon then just cut power to the engines and finish off the meals. I was getting around 6-7% each trip. All I can say is that the achievement description is wrong or it's broken.

Glad I’m not the only one struggling here! . Although just by looking at the completion percentage for this I knew we were all having some kind of issue.. I’m still in the same boat as LxVaiN and seeing no consistency from trip to trip .

Ok guys i have new results. I can 100% tell you that the progress refreshes immediately, not after the mission. It just takes a few seconds. Also the stars rating is irrelevant! Im always on 5 stars and get progress with the following method: i was trying to get another achievement and cooked all food at once and let it rot. Then i was feeding the passengers and immediately heal them. When i was doing this i got about 6% progress every route. Why? I have no idea but it works.

Another method i found was when you turn off gravity and heal everyone who gets sick, the passengers still get hungry. When you feed them this way you will also get about 6-7% every route. But since this works just once and then the health inspector shows up until you get your stars back its a rather lenghty process.

I think it's best to approach this as if the description said:
"Serve 500 meals in solo play"

Don't overthink it, leave this achvt for last and just grind it out. @sonnyforple described a good method in an earlier comment.