This is a Written Version of the Script

 

Pick up a piece of food and hold it in your hand.

Look at it with your physical eyes.
Notice colors, shapes, surface texture, light and dark.
Now imagine that you can see into this piece of food and see its history.
It is like seeing a videotape of the foods life, but it is running backward.
For example, you see how the food was placed in your hand or on your fork
You see where it came from before that, perhaps a bowl, and before that, a box or a pot
You see the person who cooked the food.
You see the person who bought the food or the ingredients and placed them on the pantry shelf.

Before that you see the store, and you see the clerk who unloaded the cartons from the delivery truck, opened them, priced the items, and put them on the shelf in the grocery store.
Next you follow the truck that brought the items and then, another step back to place that processed and packaged this food or the ingredients in it.
Keep going backward, looking with the inner eye at all the living beings, people, animals, and plants, whose life energy flowed into this piece of food and into getting it to you.

When you reach the farm and the plants that grew or produced your food, ask where those plants or animals came from and continue to extend your vision backward in time.
Go as far as you can, back through ancestral lines and countries.

Now we ask some questions.
How many people were involved in bringing this one piece of food to you?

If you include all the animals, plants, insects, worms, and microscopic organisms that had a role in the life of this food, how many would there be?
How far back in time does the life of this food go?
Where did the carbon, the hydrogen, the iron, in this food originate?
How old, then, is this food?
Now consider the life energy of all the beings who contributed to the life of this food, and, thus, when you eat it, contribute to your life.
How can we repay them all?

One answer is by eating mindfully.
When we eat and look deeply into our food, our hearts reach out to the many forms of life that are sacrificed every day so that we might live more abundantly.
How can we repay them? By being alive to them and to the food we eat, which they have provided.
By sending them the energy of loving-kindness.
By looking deeply into our food and allowing gratitude to arise naturally.

Adapt from  Jan Chozen Bays,, MD (2011-07-20). Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food (Kindle Locations 2578-2585). Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.