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Comment by bediger4000 | Hacker News Reader

In general, eating apex predators is pretty bad, because they have (and we humans have) a high concentration of every bad thing that the less-than-apex predators and herbivores pick up from the environment.

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.

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What if we all become vegetarians and the only meat we eat is recycled human flesh after we die.

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.

That is an interesting thought experiment.

As a side note, plants do produce proteins.

Indeed.

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.

the problem with any synthesis is you still require the raw materials. In the most basic form this is carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and a few more elements.

Mothers milk is a perfect food customized for each infant. Can a blue print of it be used as a source code to create food in a lab. And hence customized food?

Sorry if all this sounds far out...I don’t have scientific background in this subject.

Vegans and vegetarians live without consuming meat. There's plenty of plant substitutes for the nutrients we get from meat (nuts, mushrooms, soy and so on).

This is true. The only human derived food that we know of is breast milk.

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.

That's quite interesting. I've heard that there are some substances which human body need and which can be found in animal flesh. I've just googled for that and it seems there are plenty of articles confirming that. So I don't know who is right...

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...

You can eat safe quantities of apex predators. However, if you look at the amount of tuna you can safely eat vs the amount of sardines you'll see you can eat a lot more sardines. The tuna will have a much higher concentration of heavy metals.

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.

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