The Nutritional Content of the Human Body.

Factual Questions
1

Hello everyone. I’ve scoured the internet looking for an answer, and hopefully you can help me.

I’m researching global cannibalism practices for a college sociology class, and I figure it would interesting to find out the nutritional content of an “average” human body - protein, fat, sugars, vitamins, minerals, the whole works. Unfortunately, this information seems kind of scarce. If you can give me a lead, any lead at all, I would be very grateful. Human beings are said to taste like pork, so I may make some educated guesses based on the nutritional information of ham, but that’s pretty bad science.

I apologize for the macabre subject. Thank you in advance. :slight_smile:

2

Welcome to the Dope, Long Pig! Glad to have you with us - and don’t worry, we love macabre questions here.

This article looks helpful - "Aztec Cannibalism - An Ecological Necessity? ". Scroll down to the section “Cannibalism as a Dietary Supplement”, and you’ll find this paragraph:

Note that this article discusses only the potential role of cannibalism to offset protein shortages in Aztec society, and doesn’t address human meat as a source of vitamins or other nutrients. Further, note that this is from 1978 - nutrition science may well have moved on since then.

If you decide to cite this article, I’d suggest that you track it down in Science - the linked webpage claims it was published in May of 1978.

3

Hey, thanks for your reply! I actually found that article already, and I’m definitely planning to cite and use it. Very informative. :smiley:

Goodness, I find it sort of difficult to believe that no one’s ever dumped a body into a blender and measured the content of the slurry…

4

How weird is your question compared to THIS thread?

5

Well, perhaps you could suggest it to Tom Dickson