I never managed to get into The Hunger Games for a number of reasons (mostly the idea of kids killing each other for entertainment was just not something I want to read) but the straw that broke the camel's back was the way all the sweet things were luxuries Katniss and her family could only dream of, even if they were made with ingredients that should logically be the most plentiful, while vegetables, which produce few calories per acre, tend to be finicky, and only grow in certain places are fairly labor intensive, and cannot me mechanically harvested, are available to the underclasses. Broke my suspension of disbelief into little tiny pieces.

Externally, of course, it makes sense to do things that way, the things that the YA audience wants to eat are unavailable, but the things they have to suffer through in our world make up the bulk of poor Katniss's diet... Well.

And given the popularity of the books, is this all something that's only ever going to bother an insignificant subset of overly picky readers, and we should stop acting like writers should have to think every last bit of this through?

Nah.