Cannibalism - #12: The Yucky Bits

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TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? (munching) With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twelve – the yucky bits”. (burp)

So, if a cannibal has dined on all the best bits of a human, what’s likely to be scraped into the bin?
In 2007, writer and serial killer José Luis Calva murdered his girlfriend, and was captured tucking into a plate of the pan-fried flesh from her forearm, which he had seasoned with lemon. To his side was a half-written book titled Cannibal Instincts, with a doctored image of Hannibal Lecktor on the cover.

That is how we imagine a cannibal to be, listening to opera as they nibble the finest cuts of a foe, or like Rudy Eugene, with feverish relish they gorge on a raw face with not even a napkin under his chin.

But not every cannibal can be so choosey, especially if their life depends on it.
So bits should be avoided?

Dr Jim Stoppani, a Yale certified nutritionist said “eyes contain an acid which can make humans sick, fingers and toes are filled with cartilage which won't digest, and penises - as German cannibal Armin Meiwes discovered having sampled a tiny tit-bit of dick – “are spongy and have little nutritional value”.

Now, you’re probably thinking the worst bits to eat would be the eyes, the privates, the gut and the bum hole – which I assure you we’ll get to – but there are parts of the body which are worse to eat.

Many cannibals imagine the person they’d eat being clean, but who truly is? The average human has 39 trillion bacteria in and on their bodies, with the most infected areas being the nose, nails, behind the ears, the mouth (with 600 different species of bacteria), the belly button (being warm, it has its own microbiome of 2000 species), the armpits (with shaved pits having less than the average 80,000 bacteria), and the forearms with 44 species of bacteria, as it’s the area most people forget to wash.

I mean, there’s a good reason why Heriberto Lazcano, the kingpin of the Los Zetas cartel had his victims bathe first, as yes, it de-stressed the meat, but can you really trust someone to wash correctly?

A common part of an animal to eat in Cambodia and Thailand is the trachea, the airway leading from the larynx to the bronchi of the lungs, also called windpipe, which one intrepid explorer described as “there is no end to chewing a trachea, it’s like a rubbery length of hosepipe, but less flavourful”. You’ll notice I have no stories of cannibals happily chowing down on a human trachea. Hmm, funny that?

In 2023, Thandolwenkosi Ndlovu of Zimbabwe crushed the skulls of five homeless men with a brick, severed their genitals, and having removed their intestines using glass, he grilled them on a fire, before eating them. Said to be “soft but very chewy”, with the intestines being the final stage of digestion and not being a trained chef, it’s unlikely that he removed all (if any) of the pre-digested food or faeces.  

We’ve discussed fat, but one thing we forget is lipomas, rogue fat cells which grow in odd places. Said to be harmless and painless, they have a doughy or rubbery texture, and although most are tiny, some can weight 200 grams and one was 14 kilos. But the largest was in 1894 when a 26-year-old man had a one on his shoulder weighing 22.7kg, the same as 4 ½ gallons of paint.

It’s only fat, but would you eat it?

Similarly, cysts are pockets of tissue full of fluid, blood, hair, bone and sometimes pus. Over 1 million people have cysts, and although many are benign, some contain infections, tumors and parasites, with the largest recorded being an ovarian cyst with 37 litres of fluid - that’s the equivalent of half a bath.

And although, unsurprisingly, I have no tales about cannibals (knowingly) eating cysts, when mothers eat their placenta, a common complaint is getting a vein, said to be ‘quite stringy’ between their teeth.

Cannibals eat thighs, hearts, livers and kidneys for a reason. Because they eat it in animals, they can be certain that it’s not going to kill them (as some seemingly innocent body parts can do – more on those later), or that they’ll taste utterly foul. But what about the invasive species within us?

Tapeworms exist in 20 million people worldwide, and as ribbon-like worms in the intestine, although they are often 12 to 36 feet in length, the longest in a human was 82 feet long (that’s two double decker buses). And given that a cannibal’s meal is the meat from corpses, unless it’s killed, cut up, and eaten or frozen quickly - depending on the climate - maggots may appear just 24 hours after death.

Cannibals are as choosy as we are, so it’s unsurprising that Issei Sagawa ‘the Kobe cannibal’ consumed only the tastiest (and in his case, the sexiest) bits of a beautiful young girl, rather than the diseased entrails of an unwashed shut-in, stating "I wanted to know the taste of the young beautiful girl's flesh". 

Many cannibals do likewise… but does only eating (or occasionally the nibbling of a morsel of a limb) mean they’re not a true cannibal? Shouldn’t a real cannibal eat everything, not just the best bits, or is a meat eater not a real meat eater unless they’ve eaten a pig’s sweetbreads, eyeballs and anus? Food for thought.

If this episode wasn’t too unpalatable, join me tomorrow for diseases and hygiene.