• Question: is human meat healthy to eat?

    Asked by fionn2002 to Andrew, Dilip, Emma, John, Ruth on 16 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Quigley

      Andrew Quigley answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      I guess eating human muscle would be ok, once you make sure to cook it enough.

      Other internal organs not so much. In some tribal cultures there was a tradition of eating someone once they had died. I think they thought it would help the deceased person live on and they would absorb some of their characteristics. Like I said, eating the muscle wouldn’t cause a problem but they also cooked up the brain and fed it both young children and tribal elders. The people who consumed some brain, started getting really sick, lost the ability to speak, and usually became emotionally unstable, among other symptoms. They would eventually die as a result of this disease, which was called Kuru disease. There is special type of protein, called prion, that is only found in brain tissue. Which is why only the people who had some brain ended up getting sick.

      So if you’re just planning on having some ribs, or a leg, you should be ok. I’d stay from the brains though. 🙂

    • Photo: John Gleeson

      John Gleeson answered on 16 Nov 2015:

      From a gross point of view… no it is totally not chill to eat peoples.

      From a scientific point of view, you wouldn’t like it. Humans aren’t exactly… raised for good eating quality. We don’t build the right kind of tasty muscle you’d expect with chicken or beef. If you ate a body builder his meat would be really tough and not very pleasant. Humans also have a tendency to deposit fat in lots of places… And as Andrew said some cultures would eat deceased tribal members, but then the meat would be even grosser because it wasn’t slaughtered and prepared like we prepare meat.

      So in conclusion… Healthy possibly. Pleasant no!

      PS… I had this discussion with a lecturer before

    • Photo: Ruth Hamill

      Ruth Hamill answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      I would err on the side of not especially because of nasties like prions as Andrew alluded to – while these are higher in brain, nervous tissue is located throughout the body. Also there may be a risk of consuming parasites.

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