I know this is a strange question, but trust me, there are even stranger questions from the brain this one came from. No, I don’t have plans to eat anyone, I don’t even eat meat. Maybe this was asked before but I couldn’t find anything. I also know that ‘how nutritious’ something is depends on what/who is eating it. Every living thing has different needs.
So… for any human-like creature (I know that for humans it is dangerous to eat human meat), how good a meal are we? Do we have a lot of cholesterol? What other animal is alike in nutrition contents?
Please spare me stories of Hannibal Lecter and other whackos. They freak me out.
I believe I read on this very board ages ago that human ‘meat’ has an awful lot of cholesterol in it :eek: Well, you know what they say, “You are what you eat!” I’d guess we’re loaded with saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, and good old fasioned asbestos.
…okay maybe I was joking about the asbestos but I was on a roll there! Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that whatever toxins/carcinogens/heavy metals the person you’re eating had been exposed to, the more you are ingesting. So you’ve got whatever bad stuff already in you, added on top of all the bad stuff the person you’re eating has in him.
Unless you are eating a clown. Because clowns just taste funny
Edible fish (and shellfish) are often carnivores or omnivores. Pigs are omnivores. Chickens are omnivores. Just about the only major human meat source that is always classified as a herbivore is cattle. (and even that requires us to ignore the animal sources used in modern cattle feeds.)
Read Stephen King’s story “Survivor Type.” It’s about a person chopping off his body parts and eating them. King asked a doctor if this was possible, and the doctor said “Yes. People are just meat.”
If you go by what we choose to eat as food, herbivores tend to taste “better” than carnivores or omnivores. This is why we eat more chicken, beef and venison than we do wolves, tigers and mountain lion.
The flavor of omnivores or carnivores tends to be excessively “gamey” in taste.
So in other words: when the plane crashes, eat the hippies first. You’ll thank me.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and speculate that a human being contains those nutrients required for the support of human life, and in darn near the optimum ratios.
As far as the concentration of environmental toxins, that would probably be a minor issue, depending on the age of the, uh, subject. There are a lot of toxins, dioxins, PCB’s, pesticides, and the like, that bioaccumulate in fat cells, and would tend to increase with age. Of course, if a person contained toxic levels of these contaminants they’d be sick, so occasional meals of human meat might not be a big problem.
You’d want to cook it well of course. Every parasite, germ, virus, and prion that lives in the meal would happily live in the diner. I’d recommend an internal temperature of 165 deg F.
nutrition depends on what cut of the meat you want. organ meat is going to be less healthy than say…rump roast or ham cuts. keep in mind though, that as you go up the food chain energy and nutrition decreases. and since humans eat just about everything, almost everything has more energy and nutrition that a person.
next step: cut off appendage, place in bomb calorimeter, incinerate, discover caloric content of your pinky.
Alarmist assertions on the rise of human obesity notwithstanding, I would speculate that the human as a food source would not be ideal for the same reasons that other animals not raised for food tend to be less than ideal. Human meat might be OK as a source of protein in a survival situation, but I would guess it is too much like a “gamey” meat to be a good dietary staple.
