I must confess, I just saw this movie about a month and a half ago. Due largely in part because it’s been referenced here so much.
You know, if you think about - all the manufacturers of soylent green did was remove a couple hundred steps in the food chain. We die, get buried, decompose, plants grow, get eaten by animals, animal gets eaten by person.
Or plant gets eaten by person.
And it wasn’t as if the manufacturers were out kidnapping and killing people against they’re will to get the substance of their product. People died naturally or committed suicide. (Personally I thought the images shown during the “homecoming” were a little cheesy. What did they show someone who had never seen the earth that way before?)
Those people must have been in serious denial. If the gov’t had been reduced to mining the ocean for plankton and only issuing “food” on certain days, and everyone knew the country (at least) was way overpopulated, what did they expect to happen eventually? Especially since this was before the advent of genetically engineered food.
Eventually all they could do is eat each other.