Cannibalism - #4: Muscle

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

For many cannibals, the human thigh or buttock is their go-to meat. But what does it taste like?

The truth is, even those who may have eaten human flesh haven’t tasted it. David Harker supposedly cooked it with pasta, a tomato ragu and cheese. The Garanhuns of Brazil seasoned the flesh of two women and a teenager with salt and cumin. And although Jeffrey Dahmer said that thighs “tasted like filet mignon” – being delicately beefy, juicy and sweet – like a scumbag, he said he ate it with ketchup.

Muscle is made up of thousands of elastic fibres bundled tightly together. Made of blocks of proteins called myofibrils, of more than 600 muscles in our bodies, cardiac muscles are in your heart, smooth muscles enable your organs to function, and skeletal muscles expand and contract to produce motion. Without them, you’d be as floppy and useless as a politician being asked to answer an honest question.

The largest muscle is the gluteus maximus or buttocks which aids your posture, the smallest connects to your eardrum to your inner ear, the strongest is the masseter providing 200lbs of force for your jaw so we can tear apart tough meat, the most efficient is the heart which pumps 2500 gallons of blood a day, and the busiest are your eye muscles which make microscopic adjustments 10000 times an hour.

Being 40% of his body mass, although Steve our average UK male looks a little wimpy, his 33.6 kilos or 74lbs of muscle is the same as carrying three car tyres, an adult Dalmatian or a queen-sized mattress.

That’s a lot of muscle. But given that most meat-eaters consume 80kgs (12st 7lbs) of red meat a year, Armin Meiwes scoffed 20 kilos (44 lbs) of his victim, and competitive eater Molly Schuyler gorged 10.2 kilos (22.5lbs) of steak in a single sitting, it is doable, but unadvisable, unless you have shares in Anusol.

But if a cannibal abides by the NHS dietary guidelines of 70g of red meat a day, if his 33.6 kilos of meat is made into 294 quarter pounders or 167.3 300g sausages (excluding his ‘littlest sausage’), the entire muscle mass of our average UK male would take 480 days to safely digest, and nutritionally, it’s good.

Archaeologist James Cole of the University of Brighton released a study on human cannibalism in the palaeolithic era (the years prior to 10,000 BC) and determined the calorific value of each body part. So, if a serial killer stripped and ate just Steve’s skeletal muscles (no organs, no fat and no tendons), providing 43,500 calories, at 2500 calories a day, that could keep a cannibal alive for almost 17 ½ days.

Muscle contains as much as 70% of the body’s nutrients, being full of proteins, fats and amino acids.

But as many killers eat human meat seasoned or drenched in sauce, can we ever know what it tastes like? The most honest account was from the survivors of crashed flight UAF 571. Starving in sub-zero temperatures at 11,800ft, having cut matchstick sized pieces of thigh off the dead and sundried it to make it palatable, they said “it doesn’t taste of much, it’s like eating rice”. But being so malnourished and so emaciated that some men lost 45 kilos (100lbs) in weight, their taste buds would be affected.

Jeffrey Dahmer, a heavy smoker, said that thigh “tasted like filet mignon”, but also “it tasted spongy, it was so tough I could hardly chew it”, so he tenderised and fried it with onions. Armin Meiwes said “it tasted like pork but a little bit more bitter, stronger”. Issei Sagawa said it was “tender and soft like raw tuna”, and the customers of Vladimir Nikolayev alias 'Vladimir the Cannibal' who ate assorted meat he’d sold at a market as kangaroo, said it tasted “odd and a little bitter”. Of course, that depends on what cut of meat they ate, as a bicep and a thigh would taste different to a hand or a foot muscle.

In 1998, TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall ate placenta and stated “it tastes like pork, a little more bitter ". Karl Denke, the Cannibal of Münsterberg pickled his victim’s flesh in jars and successfully sold it as 'pork'. And in war zones, the smell of burning flesh is often reported as being similar to bacon.

Which makes sense, as according to the Texas A&M University's Department of Animal Science, human muscle has a similar concentration of myoglobin to sheep and pigs than cows. In 2006, skirting the law of cannibalism, journalist Gregg Foot had a nail-sized piece of thigh biopsied, chemically analysed, and concocting a piece of meat made from that composition, his version of his own flesh was said to be more like pork and lamb with a beefy smell, stating as he ate it, “it's good, it's really beefy, a bit lamby”.

Although, it can’t have been that good, as having scoffed 20 kilos of his victim’s flesh as well as his chewy little penis, while in prison, Armin Meiwes the German cannibal has since become a vegetarian.

But, of course, this was an obvious choice, as surely every cannibal would eat the meat. But what about other bits? Join me tomorrow to discuss the crunchiest part of the human body – the bones.