Would You Eat Soylent Green?



Spoiler alert, in case you haven't seen the 1973 movie Soylent Green {wiki}. Soylent Green is made of people. However, you have to remember that the world in the movie is horribly overcrowded and underfed. After all, it is set in 2022!
First, a quick recap: In the movie, the earth is overpopulated and over-polluted. Global warming is in full swing and even rich people have to eat crummy food. The government hands out rations of Soylent products, which are awful, flavorless cubes and loafs of “soy” (actually plankton but really it’s irrelevant cause it’s people) foodstuff that look like red, blue, or green Play-Doh. When you die, you go to a death-a-torium of sorts where you pay a small fee, then watch a really pretty movie filled with scenes from nature and peaceful music. You die quickly and painlessly from a colorless, odorless gas.

Then your body is shipped off and turned into Soylent Green which everyone loves to eat.

Would you eat Soylent Green under those conditions? How about in other science fiction scenarios? Several are spelled out at Science Not Fiction, where you are asked to leave your thoughts. Link

Stupidest movie ever. The book fully explained soylent green is a product of ocean plankton scooped up by giant subs with filters much like a whale eats. There are also other colors, green being the most desirable. In the book, soylent green is NOT people and nothing of that sort happens in the book.... There is one part where they eat some rancid beef much like we all did in colonial days... Otherwise it's a pretty boring read.
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Doesn't cannibalism spread brain disease? Plus, ewwwww. That and in countries where extreme famine has occurred in recent times (China 1960, North Korea)when people do resort to cannibalism there is still wide spread death due to starvation because of the general lack of food. People wait too long to resort to cannibalism (they have been starved for too long so they don't provide enough nourishment)
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Many people in the world already don't have a choice of what they eat, and should such a thing be made with the public not knowing what it actualy was, they would eat it too. I'm sure all the chemicals in the stuff we eat & breath in would make human food products just plain toxic for consumption.
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It totally took me about three reads to notice that it was underFED and not unDERFed for some strange reason. Just one of those words that looks weird. No I would not eat Soylent Green.
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Back in the day, when Christianity was just blossoming, Northern Italians decided if they were already eating and drinking the body of Christ, they might as well eat any stray travelers wandering by, too, since there was a famine going on.

We eat to live.
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Not exactly right, the Soylent refers to a combination of Soy beans and lentils; Soylent green is like the new line of Soylent product that everyone really likes;

People don't go to the deathatorium when they die, its more like, at age 60, they HAVE to go to the deathatorium, but at least it's a pleasant experince;

From there they are trucked to the factory to be secretly turned into soylent green. Charlton Heston uncovers this and tells everyone. i can't quite remember how people react, because to be honest, the movie sucked balls.
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Yep , man if it were those conditions man food is food.

As for the deathatorium yeah there was an age limit akin to children of the corn. age should be lowered tho cause old people are probably wirey.

@nihil cannibalism may be bad but were talking processed people.. totally different LOL

Soylent green now with more Kids!
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I don't see Soylent green happening, at least not as the primary food source on the planet. The existing people would be living in a closed system. It would take more energy to raise the next generation, than could be found in the previous one. So, doing such a thing could only buy time.

As for the question... Sure, but I would need a lot of ketchup!!! Heck, who knows what you will do if you are starving. The guy in "127 Hours" cut his own arm off to survive. Eating Soylent Green sounds a lot better than having to do that.
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I'm glad someone else mentioned that this was an awful movie based on a better book by Harry Harrison called "Make Room! Make Room!" There was practically nothing in the movie from the book other than the overpopulation issue. I wouldn't say this was Harrison's best book, but I used to like his other books and short stories when I was younger. It's been years since I've read them, though.
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In those conditions, and if it was between soylent green and death from starvation, I would totally eat it. All who say they wouldn't are lying.
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Eat people or die of starvation? Of course I'd eat people. So would 90% of the rest of the planet.

And if everyone else was doing it, you probably wouldn't even find it yeuchy. It's a monkey society.
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