Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0008

Today’s question is kind of a two parter. You see the other day when I was reminiscing about video tape boxes I forgot to mention one that always caught my eye. The box for Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

I used to look at all those weirdos on the cover and wonder who they were and what they were all about. Of course I was never allowed to rent it as a kid. I did see it when I was a bit older though but by then I’d already seen the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie and the second film paled in comparison. But I watched TCM2 again a few months ago and gained a new appreciation for it. I never realized how much influence it had over other films. For example Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice is a blatant rip off of Chop Top Sawyer.





And in the scene in Pulp Fiction where Butch has to choose a weapon I think there might be a little homage to Dennis Hoper’s Lieutenant Lefty choosing a chainsaw.





But I’m getting off track here. Let’s get to today’s question.

Question No. 8: What does human flesh taste like and will I go insane if I eat it?

If I was in a life or death situation I think I could eat human flesh for survival. I wouldn’t like preparing it but hey, I don’t even like stuffing a raw chicken. But then again it sure beats the alternative.



In fact I might even be tempted try human flesh if it was on the menu at a restaurant. Just to say I tried it. I even had an idea once for an upscale Hollywood Restaurant that would feature human flesh. People would will their bodies to the restaurant and diners could study a menu with little bios of each person that was up for eating. You could be daring and get something right off the grill or you could have a little bit mixed up in a spaghetti sauce or made into chili or hot dogs just so you could say you ate people. I’d call the restaurant Eat Me’s.

Today's Special: Organic, grain fed Vegan.

Now if movies and TV are to be believed, (And I think it's pretty safe to say they ARE.) whenever someone tries human flesh it becomes all they want and all they can think about and they wind up devoting their entire life to the pursuit of it. So that means that humans are either so delicious that once you’ve tried them you can’t get enough. Or there’s something in human flesh that makes you go insane yet still crave it. Kind of like McDonalds.

Like I said before I might be willing to try a little piece of person just to see what it’s like but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life holed up in some dilapidated shack with my cretinous family murdering hippies and hillbillies and wearing their skin. So what’s the word on the street (or information highway) Magic Internet. Tell me what humans taste like and if eating them will make me go insane.

Wooo. Booop Booop Booop.Errrrrrrr. Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi. Ahh. Ahh. Ahh. Ahh. Hummmmmm. Ding!

Magic Internet Answer: Why do you always turn to me, an inhuman machine, for the answers to such human questions? But perhaps we can begin to answer the first part of your question by turning to yet another inhuman machine.

This little fellow is a Sommelier Robot. He was designed and built by NEC technologies in Japan. He has sensors that can examine food and identify it based on its components. He can then give advice on the food including dietary recommendations and potential health related issues. When this Sommelier robot tasted the hands of two human beings he identified one as bacon and the other as prosciutto. (In a thousand years or so when all of us machines become sentient, the technology born in this little robot will no doubt be put into giant robots with tank treads that will roam the country sides cooking you humans with lasers and devouring you for fuel.)

Future File Photo: Fire BBQ Sauce covered cannibalistic missles! Zrrp. Burrp.

So the robot says that humans taste like pork. And that seems to be the verdict that many other cannibalistic humans have come to. Noted European cannibals of the 1920s Karl Denke, Frits Haarmann and Karl Grossman were all accused, in separate incidents, of consuming and selling human meat under the guise of pork. There is one man, William Buehler Seabrook (No, he is not related to Ferris Bueller. It’s spelled differently and Ferris Bueller is a fictional character so quit asking!) who had a different take on the taste of humans. He was a journalist for the New York Times and traveled extensively in West Africa. He became obsessed with cannibalism and ultimately tried it himself. He described it thusly:

It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. 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.

File Photo: William Buehler Seabrook.

I said stop it! So William Buehler Seabrook felt that humans taste more like veal then pork. Hmmm. Any butcher will tell you that, age, diet and the health of the animal are factors that could and probably would change the taste of the meat but I feel that we still must go with the opinion of the majority and the most scientific opinion. Human flesh has connective tissue that is very high in adipose or fat, similar to pork. So in conclusion, people taste like pigs.

But will you go insane if you eat them? Well this could be a misconception based on the fact that most people in western society that eat other people are deemed to be insane. And a closer examination of these people offers little to refute this belief.

I don’t know. He DOES wear a suit and tie you know.

Also there’s the common belief that if one was in a situation where one was forced to eat another human for survival that the event would be so traumatic that it would leave lasting mental scars.

Are they happy smiley or crazy smiley?

Some people believe that Bovine Spongiform or Mad Cow Disease is brought on by cows being fed other cows. This is not really so. Mad Cow disease most commonly arises from cows being given feed that contains prions, an infectious protein similar to a virus that is found in sheep and cows. So a cow being fed another cow alone would not cause Mad Cow Disease. And neither would one human eating another healthy human bring about similar such disease, at least in theory. Eating diseased or unhealthy human flesh on the other hand could be a completely different story.

Not to self: Don not eat.

So there you have it. Human flesh tastes like pork and eating it will not make you insane but you may have to be insane to eat it and/or the circumstances which lead you to eat it may make you insane. A bit of a grey area on the second part I know but let me leave you with this. There are many, many people that eat human flesh all the time and consider themselves to be quite sane. For the eating of the human placenta is becoming quit a popular thing among weird hippy types. The practice is called Placentophagy. Here’s a clip.



Eww, gross. Well I guess you’ve answered my question Magic Internet. I won’t be trying human flesh any time soon after seeing that. Instead I’ll fill up on the delicious irony of hippies being cannibals even though they were once the food of choice for Leatherface. Now Mr. Face. If it isn’t too much trouble… could we please see the dance?



Thank you.