Cannibalism - #16: The Lungs

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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 sixteen – the lungs”. (burp)

Are they as tasty and light as a Victoria sponge, or like chewing on a set of bagpipes?

2004, Sherman in Texas, Andre Lee Thomas murdered his estranged wife, Laura Boren, and their son Andre Lee aged 4 and 1-year-old daughter Leyha Marie. Believing they had demons inside of them, he cut open their chests, removed their hearts, threw them in a rubbish bin, and later, he gouged out his own eyes. But with no medical training, he initially removed part of his wife’s lung by mistake.

We know where our heart is as we feel it beat, but with the whole chest moving as we breathe, to the average person, the inside of the thoracic cavity would be an indistinguishable mess of bloody organs.

Weighing a kilo, lungs are 9-inches long or 10 ½ inches when expanded stretching from the collarbone to the sixth rib down, and as the 2nd largest organ in the chest after the liver, it’s hard to miss. As a key part of our respiratory system, lungs hold on average 1 ½ pints of air in its 6-litre capacity, and like the kidneys, our lungs are asymmetrical, with the right lung being larger and fitted with an additional lobe.

As a biological wonder, your lungs process 20,000 breaths a day, roughly 11,000 litres of air (the same as 2400 balloons), with each breath taking 12-20 minutes to process any noxious gases, convert it into safe breathable oxygen and expel it as carbon dioxide. Lungs are the only organs that float, you can live with only one, and we don’t consciously breathe as the medulla oblongata – part of the brainstem – triggers us to inhale, and although many believe that our chest expanding is due to it filling with air, inhalation caused by the diaphragm moving our organs to increase and decrease space for the lungs.

In animal terms, lungs are offal, and although there’s no guidelines by the NHS on how much lung is safe to eat, for palaeolithic cannibals, lungs could only provide 1600 calories, enough for 2/3 of a day.

In 2013, Abu Sakkar, a Syrian rebel commander cut out the heart of an enemy and ate it before his men. But when quizzed by the press, he later claimed it could have been liver or a piece of lung. Which is an easy mistake to make, as the lobe of the left lung is a similar size, shape and position in the chest.

In England, since the BSE Crisis of 1989, when meat infected with ‘mad cow disease’ entered the food chain, it has been illegal to sell the uncooked lungs of animals, as “fluids like phlegm may enter the lung during slaughter”. But let’s not forget, our respiratory system produces 1 ½ litres of mucus a day.

If prepared correctly by removing the fat and washing it out by inflating and soaking it in salted water, lungs can be quite elastic and chewy, with a spongy texture like firm tofu. They’re a pinkish red when raw (owing to 300 billion oxygen rich capillaries), but when cooked, they turn a sickly grey colour.

Given its texture and taste, many chefs choose to tenderise it, season it with strong spice, and slice up the bronchial pipe as it has the texture of rare steak.

With so many disgusting parts of a human to digest, if a cannibal simply opened a cookbook, added the lungs, heart and liver to some oats, onions, herbs and spices, in five hours they’d have a five-kilo haggis, and once they’d lubricated their pals with enough whiskey, linked arms, and sung a Rabbie Burns poem that no-one knows the words to, by dawn, all of the evidence would have been scoffed.

There’s a reason why – except in certain cultures – lungs are heavily disguised or disposed of, they are disgusting; the look, the colour, the texture and the flavour, not to mention what they contain. Lungs are one of our filtration systems processing harmful gases like carbon monoxide or fibres like asbestos.

And although few blood disorders are contracted by ingestion, if the corpse has died of a transmissible bacterial or viral infection like Bronchitis, Influenza or Tuberculosis would a cannibal eat it? And with 2.5 million people diagnosed with lung cancer a year, would they know what a tumour looks like?

My friend, the unnamed GP, suggested eating a vape smoker, as they’ve pre-flavoured their lungs with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla, which is more preferrable than a cigarette smoker who - with just one pack of 20 a day – filters 250 milliliters (or 8.5 fluid ounces) or tar through their lungs every year, as well as lead, acetone, ammonia, hexamine, and poisons like formaldehyde, arsenic and cyanide.

As dangerous vectors for disease, animal lungs are often destroyed, or cooked at high temperatures and used in cattle food. So, unless a cannibal wants to risk getting sick, prepare it well, slice is finely, tenderise it, give it a strong seasoning, and deep-fry it, as it’s spongy texture will make it like crackling.

There are few cases of cannibals willingly eating lungs. In April 2002, Antron Singleton, a US rapper known as Big Lurch killed his roommate and ripped open her chest. His teeth marks were found on her face and her lungs, and although undetermined, human remains were later found in his stomach. But having been on PCP (a mind-altering drug), it is uncertain if he knew what he was doing, or why.

Join me tomorrow to explore the organ which a cannibal might savour with a nice chianti… the liver.