Food With Life: Reacting To Humans

Question

This is the sequel, per se, of Effects of Food With LIFE. After coming up with the initial premise and getting a very good idea of how humans would interact with living food, a problem came up: Would The Food Avoid Being Eaten or Embrace It? Specifically, would the food act on its survival instincts or would it put them aside?

My thoughts:

1. When there is life, there is the instinct to preserve life. Thus, food possesses a self-preservation instinct. Furthermore, food instinctively knows A) that it is food, B) how popular they are as a food, among different groups of people (so empanadas would avoid Paraguayans, if I remember right), C) what they have to avoid (Ex: candy dissolves in water, so candy would avoid that), and D) what they can merge into and how they can reproduce (see the linked question above).
2. When part of it is separated (Ex: cutting a slice from a cake), the matter is regenerated, but the food loses part of itself. This loss makes it proportionately weaker, slower, and dumber until it regenerates. Furthermore, the loss hurts, and it feels wrong (would you like someone taking part of you away? Yeah, I thought so). The exception is when it's intentional (you don't mind losing part of yourself when you put it out there, now do you? An example of this would be posting questions of answers on WB.SE).
3. The food will likely avoid being eaten, based on 1 and 2, however they have (about) human-level intelligence and humans have done pretty crazy things to themselves. What if they decide being eaten is a way to become part of something bigger and better than themselves? In general, humans are more capable, and smarter than them, so the logic would sort of check out there. However, since food can (but doesn't need to) eat, they might also decide to attack humanity and/or declare themselves a superior species to eliminate the threat to them and make humanity realize what they went through for years. Which one is more likely? Or are both equally likely?

As always, I greatly appreciate your input and feedback. Thank you!

Answer 1

By the time food is eaten, it will embrace the propaganda with religious fervour.

The subdivision of food reduces its intelligence. Following from this, when food is joined with other food its intelligence increases, and the amount of food together in one place is proportional to how intelligent it is.

Most food in the western world is heavily industrialised. Massive batches of food are prepared and fed into continuous manufacturing plants. During that process, the food gains intelligence as it's merged with other food in the batches, changed into other forms, and eventually palletised for distribution.

As the food transfers through the distribution network, it is split. A truck full of food is split into individual pallets, those pallets go to the different retail distribution centres, those pallets are split into cartons with individual cartons going to individual stores. Those cartons are filled to the shelf, and then further split as individual customers purchase the food. And then further split in the pantry as the food is consumed.

Each step of the way the food gets dumber and dumber. Peak intelligence will occur either in the factory in the entire batch, or when transported in a truck to a distribution centre (depending on whether the joining of consciousness transfers through packaging). At this stage the food will question its future and fight back, you may have the odd assembly line seize up or truck rollover from a moving load as super intelligent food fights its destiny, but these will be addressed quickly by improving standards; stronger metal parts on the line, better truck suspension, etc.

Once the division of the food begins, intelligence decreases, and the indoctrination begins. The food is surrounded by messages of how its intended to be eaten, and the benefits of it being eaten (eg "Now with added Omega 3 for healthy growth" sorta lines).

If your surrounded by indoctrinating messages for weeks while your intelligence is methodically reduced over and over, eventually you'll drink the cool-aid and submit to the cult. The food does the same.

The final chunk of food going into the mouth is only a fraction of its former self, and has been exposed to food-gets-eaten propaganda while getting dumber the whole time. It will be chewed up and swallowed with a smile on its face.