What does human taste like

That burned them in the end. What do you think was one of the biggest surprises of your research? I think the big surprises can be broken into two.

The first was how common medicinal cannibalism was throughout Europe, right up into the early part of the 20th century. Mummia, or powdered mummy, was found in the Merck Index [of chemicals, drugs and biologicals] until the early s. The second was how common it was across the animal kingdom in every major group—mostly in invertebrates but also in fish and amphibians—less common in reptiles and mammals but still there.

Medicinal cannibalism is around today, right? What I gleaned from talking to Mark Kristal at S. I went down and visited Claire Rembis and her husband in Plano, Texas, who are preparing placentas in every number of different ways: in tinctures, powdered in a capsule and ground up to put in a smoothie.

I went down with all these preconceived notions about how little science there was to back this up, but then I fell in love with her and her family. Someone had told her about eating her own placenta; she tried it and convinced herself that she felt better. So you tried it. Ritualistic cannibals are sometimes more interested in the symbolic significance of parts than taste. Eating the heart of a brave warrior or the arm muscles of a powerful fighter is thought by some to imbue the eater with the deceased's desirable qualities.

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It tastes quite good. Does his opinion tally with the experiences of other Western cannibals? After a bit more searching I found the case of William Buehler Seabrook , a journalist with the New York Times who traveled extensively in West Africa nearly a century ago.

Fascinated with the concept of cannibalism, he persuaded a medical intern at the Sorbonne the University of Paris to give him a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy man killed in an accident, which he cooked and ate, describing is as follows:. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted.

It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. So we have one for pork, one for veal. Clearly a sample size of two isn't enough - we need more people.

And here's where we descend into the really grim part: it turns out that many people may have eaten human flesh unintentionally. Apparently somewhere between veal and pork steaks. Unless you'd rather take the word of an NEC food-testing robot , which when a reporter placed his hand against its taste sensor deemed him to be "prosciutto". Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.

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