Eating human flesh can lead to transmitting parasites, as can consuming animals fed on human feces (pigs or fish). The big example of this is Kuru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease))
So: avoid human flesh to avoid concentrations of mercury, dioxin, parasites and prion-related diseases.
This is just an extreme thought experiment.
What if there was a way to sanitize meats of pathogens and parasites?
Imagine we are in a distant planet that can’t sustain CAFOs and there are just other humans around...and we don’t have resources or energy to raise meat for protein, nutrients and calories..and can only grow a certain kinds of plants as food.
Re Apex predators: wouldn’t shark or whales be apex predators of the ocean? And we consume them..some do anyways.
As a side note, plants do produce proteins.
We can’t synthesize our own foods and we let ruminants and plants to convert food from sunlight and water and soil do the work for us.
But what if we can hack a way to synthesize our own food? And maybe even customize it?
As an extreme non science backed thought experiment(but hopefully can be tested): what if we are able to create a formula to synthesize and customize all that a human would need in terms of nutrition from the time they are born..from stem cells or cord blood cells? Maybe it can even predictively measure what we need as we go through life events like puberty or pregnancy or old age or trauma etc.
Sorry if all this sounds far out...I don’t have scientific background in this subject.
Can we create a food from our stem cells?
This is mostly a random thought experiment. It’s not to actually trying to feed the human population nor is it based on hard science.
I keep thinking of how plants can synthesize their own food due to photosynthesis. Animals and birds and mammals and insects cannot...I keep going back to the origins and evolution of photosynthesis, but don’t have the scientific background to figure why we can’t do it too..or rather..what do we need to modify in our habits or genes to be entirely a self sustaining species.
Here are just 2 random articles from google search:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/7-nutrients-you-cant-ge...
https://www.alexfergus.com/blog/8-proven-reasons-why-vegan-a...
We also aren't talking about something that will kill you today. Lots of people do things that are unhealthy and will lead to future harm.
2. If you have enough poor in your country and human flesh is valued enough, people will get killed for black market.
3. Human flesh can be deadly like Kuru. I couldn't watch videos of how they had tremours! The clan was on the verge of collapsing so they stopped.
However, Kuru is good point; since it is not good to eat, so, don't eat, please (another comment mentions other kind of disease too). There is valid reason to be careful due to such thing. It is also contrary to the English cultural that I know, I think.
Vegan here, my gf had a shirt saying that, with the Goya picture Saturn Devouring his Son[0] on it. I liked it so much she got me one too. Important message, I think.
But seriously...we can, see the book/movie Alive[1]. If it's that or starve to death, we all would. It apparently was (is?) common in many traditional cultures, e.g. (as I learnt recently) in areas of the Philippines until the 19th C.
Obviously there are ethical issues/black market abuse etc. but it seems such a waste to inject a body full of formaldehyde or whatever or burn it or bury it after the homo sapien organism is considered an empty shell after its organs cease to function.
Thanks for all that first quote! I love Flanders and Swann! I used to think it hilarious and fun to start singing ‘The Reluctant Cannibal’ at dinners until I had to stop doing it because 1. No one got it anymore 2. They didn’t think it was funny.
I am a vegetarian, but I might be less squeamish about ingesting meat if it was harvested ethically. Perhaps mere minutes after death or right after death. We harvest organs after one dies. Why not the rest of the body?
Well yes, I've wondered why people who think factory farming at its worst is acceptable, with their "The animal wouldn't exist without the farm" and "painless slaughter is OK" arguments etc, never consider farmed human meat. One could use a lot of the factory farming arguments in its favour. (Both are abhorrent to me.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar : Psalmanazar was supposedly one of the real life people he borrowed from..he was an imposter who claimed to be from Formosa(Taiwan) and spun tales about human sacrifice and priests eating the hearts of young boys.
Now this might not have been entirely untrue because China(definitely not the same as Formosa as those times..but in the broader geographical region) definitely had a recipe book for cooking convicts and each crime had a custom recipe and even which parts of the body was used etc.
In India, thugees regularly sacrificed children because they were pure and blemishless. Mythology is full of children being killed by the Asuras or the ‘evil kings’ of prophesied enemies by snatching them up as infants right after they were born and killed.
Child sacrifice in Pre Colombian cultures were not uncommon either. Incas certainly offered children as sacrifice but likely didn’t rely on children for sustenance. Do you see the theme of religion seeking children as sacrifice? Which meant the priests likely ate them first...prior to becoming pastoral settlers and farmers, children were a burden to hunter gatherer communities. They held them back and the women were occupied with the raising of children. They had as few children as they could...as they settled down and started farming and owning properties and the concept of inheritance occurred wrt new ‘wealth’, then having a lot of children not just for labour but also for insurance became a desirable necessity.
Let’s not forget the filial sacrifice in the Old Testament..the very first Abrahamic lore starts with a father sacrificing his son on the mount. It occurs again and again in many of the stories of offering burnt sacrifices of children to God in the many stories. Later, there are many prohibitions against child and human sacrifice which means that it was a common practice earlier...likely with the cannonites and who worshipped Baal and Moloch as idols. I wouldn’t forget the Assyrians either...
Having said that, the Spartans were known to have exposed their infants..especially the sickly ones. Don’t know if they consumed them tho’..but these were a warrior people and not by those conducting religious priestly activity. But once again it’s a form of euthanasia/eugenics because they only wanted strong future warriors. And of course, Cato’s plea for Carthago Delenda Est because they were child sacrificers.
Time and again, we see sacrifice of humans ..and especially children..in our history. The more I think about it, every single culture in myth and lore has child sacrifice. It’s actually remarkable...agriculture probably changed that because more hands means more land could be cultivated which meant there would be enough food from the land.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sacrifice : there seems to be more!
Even Grimm’s Tales was pretty with Hansel and Gretel being caught by the witch and readied for the stew pot. The original fairy tales definitely wasn’t meant to be a metaphor or satire.
Altho..this..in our modern times with its illustrations and witticisms offers a gentle reminder to children and adults alike as to who we really are:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Children-Grisly-Recipe/dp/18...
Phew!
In most cases of human sacrifice, it was done for religious reasons, and the meat wan't eaten (or if it was then in small quantities, like eating the hearts as you mentioned). even back then, the consumption of human body parts wasn't considered healthy or nourishing, it was done only to appease the gods/give us their favor/make us stronger/etc.
I think that thoughts and stories of eating people, and especially kids that is pretty common in many societies and myths, comes as a warning or as something to fear, both because human sacrifice was common enough at a certain point, but also because it helped to easily scar people (whether the parents or the children themselves).
I think that one of the problems with eating dead humans, even recently dead people, is that those are even worst "parts" then the livings parts. What I mean is the even in the conventional meat eating industry they usually don't eat meat from animals that died naturally (and i'm assuming you're not talking about mass murder), and the reason for that is that the animal (or in our case, the human), died for a certain reason, more likely then not, from health reasons, so the chance of the meat containing disease, sickness, or even just being super weak is a lot higher then when they take a supposedly healthy animal, kill it, and harvest it.
Here it is an extension of a side discussion.
My original question was a thought experiment that..if I had a choice, I would have likely reworded (Altho I don’t know how..)
Let me try again. If we look at what is ‘food’..1. for plants, they are able to synthesize their own food from sunlight. 2. Insects like bees and ants etc use this plant synthesized food like honey or the fruit etc. 3. some plants are also carnivorous. 4. Some insects cannibalise like praying mantis. 5. Re birds, they rely on plants 6. Some birds like vultures scavenge. 7. Some birds like raptors are predators. 8. Mammals are carnivores. Some look for fresh kill. 9. I think some do eat dead animals after their natural death or even rotting flesh. 10. Fish eat krill and all that goodness. 11. Big fish eat small fish. 13. Dead fish get eaten too.
I think all of them do and can cannibalise when they need food.
But as the highest order organism, we rely on raising and slaughtering animals and birds for food. Nothing else in nature does that..it’s just bizarre. But again, I digress.
The point is we now know exactly what nutrients we need to live. Not what foods we need to live because they are multi variate. We add back vitamins and proteins and trace minerals etc to highly processed foods.
1. Why not make a broth or a gel to which we add all that we require anyways? It’s the closest we can come to synthesizing our own food.
2. Why not reuse flesh of our own? Not killing..no black market meat etc. Just freeze freshly deceased people..test them and recycle the meat just as we use the organs. We certainly do reuse organs.
3. Speaking of organs, some of them are regenerative. Blood regenerates. Plasma regenerates. Healthy organs regenerate. We can grow organs in a Petri dish to transplants with cells..we can grow ‘muscles’ in vats. We can clone mammals.
These are all possible technologies now. Ok. Expensive likely, but forget about costs for a moment. I want to think of possibilities.
So why isn’t it possible to synthesize food from our own bodies? I feel like I should stay away from the word ‘cannibalism’ because it does have a history and the thought experiment strays into the morality of what is verboten and immoral.
Synethesizing our own food...even possibly from our own or genetic kin’s deceased bodies. Yay or Nay?
Indian lores of dacoits and thugeee seeking infants was likely because they were to be consumed before they got sick or had infections. Babies get a slew of infections as to develop immunity. A ‘blemishless’ baby was important.
In India, we pierce babies ears when they are mewling infants. It makes them imperfect sacrifices. In some rural parts, they dab the baby’s face with charcoal paste and it’s supposed to ward off the ‘evil eye’. But now that I think about it, it likely served to make a child look pockmarked or just ‘not perfect’ and hence less risk of being kidnapped for cooking.
In more organized religions with a priest(pre Colombian), the priest always ‘tasted’ the prized organs(heart for instance ..of a warrior because he was brave) and distributed the rest of the body.
If you see how African tribes hunt and eat..they have one hunting trip and they eat well and the rest of the time, they just subsist on fish or foraged greens and root vegetables.
Meat was never eaten in quantities like we do now. It was unheard of...so for any tribe or community, it’s a lot of food. Likely an addition with ceremonial significance to their kill.
This isn’t about the original query re humans eating other dead humans (and if I can reword it: “self synthesizing human food from humans”)...but wrt the side discussion re children and human sacrifice and cannibalism.
[...]Benefits
Satisfies current energy or nutrition requirements.
In a bad reproductive environment, cannibalism is a way to make a recouping reproductive investment.
Puts evolutionary pressure on offspring in order to make the offspring develop quicker.
May increase the reproductive rate of a parent by making that parent more attractive to potential mates.
Gets rid of offspring that take too long to mature.
Removes weaker offspring in an overproduced brood, which makes the other offspring more likely to be successful
Costs
Loss of fitness.
Transmission of diseases and parasites.
Decrease of success in current reproduction. [..]
Incidentally, 2022 is not very far away at all.
I was so tickled when the beverage people picked the name Soylent for their product.