Tidbits #3 - What's in your manwich?

What do humans taste like? 

Armin Meiwes, the German who, in 2001, famously advertised on the internet for someone who wanted to be eaten, claimed that: ‘It tastes of pork but a little bit more bitter, stronger.’ Many firefighters don’t eat roast pork because, they say, it smells like people who have been burned. Meanwhile, the word that cannibal Polynesian islanders used for white men translated as ‘Long Pig’. 

But not everyone agrees. In the 1930s, American adventurer William Buehler Seabrook travelled extensively among cannibal societies and tasted human flesh. He reported that, ‘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.’ And Japanese murderer and cannibal Issei Sagawa described it as ‘tender and soft like raw tuna’. 

In 2011 two Dutch TV presenters announced that they would eat a piece of flesh donated by the other - live on air. Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno stated that they had undergone surgery to have a small piece of muscle removed. Mr Storm opted to lose a chunk of his backside, while Mr Zeno's meat came from his abdomen. They then apparently fried each other's meat and ate it in front of a studio audience. The bizarre stunt was part of a TV show on BNN called Proefkonijnen - meaning 'Guinea Pigs'. However, the network later revealed that it was a hoax designed to raise awareness of a shortage of organ donors. 

Had it been real, the two presenters could have escaped prosecution because cannibalism is not illegal in the Netherlands. Surprisingly, it's not illegal in the UK either - there is no statute or act of law that criminalises it. However, it is pretty much impossible to obtain human flesh without violating some other law such as homicide, or mutilating a corpse, or by committing grievous bodily harm. And, under British law, you cannot consent to GBH. 

Which means that you can legally eat placenta or munch on your own nail clippings and skin tags without a police visit. Urp.

Naturally, it’s hard to get a clear idea of the taste as so few reliable witnesses have eaten human meat. Besides which, palates differ from person to person. And the diet of the individual you’re eating can hugely alter the taste too, as can the way the meat is cooked. One popular South Pacific method for cooking humans involved wrapping the meat in leaves and cooking in a fire pit. And Sumatran cannibals once served criminals with salt and lemon.

Perhaps an unbiased view would help. In 2006, researchers at NEC System technologies and Mie University, Japan, unveiled a robot that can taste and identify a whole range of flavours. Their ultimate aim is to one day produce a machine so accurate that it can identify individual vintages of wine. At the time it could identify different cheeses, meats and some other flavours. When a reporter placed his hand in the robot’s mouth it identified the ‘food’ as bacon. When a photographer repeated the action, his hand was identified as prosciutto ham. 

I wonder if he was Italian?