This was the title of the documentary that got me to the theater at 10am. This was a movie about food production. You couldn’t say there was an agenda to it either, like movies of the past, because there was no dialogue. It was not silent by any means. This was literally a visual representation of how our fruits, vegetables, and meats are grown, cultivated, produced, and then packaged. You saw the workers feeding the chickens, picking the eggs, snapping the peppers and beans off vines, digging up the asparagus, shaking the nuts off trees, bagging the lettuce heads, slicing down the center bellies of pigs, cows, and fish, after they’d either been inseminated, castrated, shot in the head, or disemboweled. The sounds came from mass production assembly lines, industrial machines, tractors on fields…and yes, the squeals of pigs, moos of cattle, squawks of chickens. It was both humbling and disturbing, gruesome and disgusting. But, it was a brilliant representation of the labor involved and a beautiful representation of the animals sacrificed to feed us.

I can’t think of anything more poignant and timely to reflect on the week of Thanksgiving. Whether one is vegan or not, there is much to appreciate about the simple pleasure of a full belly full of food.

Home from Amsterdam, with family.