Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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

Hair is indigestible, bones are tricky to absorb, many organs require preparation, and several body parts are too toxic for anyone to swallow. But what about the bits which (it is said) are inedible?

2021, Russia, in the car boot of Yegor Komarov ‘The Murino Cannibal’ a headless body was found with its throat ripped out, surrounded by teeth marks. But as the throat contains several tough structures like the pharynx, the larynx and the hyoid bone, not only would swallowing it have risked ripping apart his own throat from within, although the thyroid is seen as a sweetbread, eaten raw and unprepared, he risked thyrotoxicosis, a violent hormone storm to the system which risks heart failure, and death.

And that’s the problem, there’s a lot of myths and misinformation about what can be eaten and can’t.

Teeth. With tooth enamel being the hardest part of a human, many assume that Coca-Cola is a good way to dissolve teeth given enough time, and it is, but so does any drink containing citric acid, worst of which is Pepsi, who some say originated this anti-Coca-Cola myth as a cunning piece of propaganda.

With a pH level of 1.5, stomach acid can dissolve teeth hence why our mouths produce saliva. If swallowed, teeth easily pass through the GI Tract, and although more than 2.5 grams of calcium a day can be toxic, with 32 teeth weighing 1 gram each, a cannibal could safely digest a set of gnashers in 13 days. Or, if they didn’t want to risk having their arsehole bitten from within, just buy a can of Pepsi.

2023, at an 18-acre farm called Fox Hollow in Indiana, investigators found 10,000 fragments of human remains of at least 11 gay men, 8 were positively identified by bone fragments, skulls and their teeth, as from the 80s to 90s, Herbert Baumeister, the Happy Face killer was also said to be the I-70 Strangler.

But that’s what’s so baffling about serial-killers and cannibals, they’re so fixated on sating their sexual needs, power struggles and daddy-issues, when it comes to disposing of bodies, they lack diligence.

Nails, like hair (and the hooves and horns of animals) is also made of keratin and can’t be digested, but salt (known as sodium chloride) strips keratin from hair. Or given that 30% of all people bite their nails, a cannibal could rip out a set – as when moisture dissipates from the body, the cuticle becomes weak – and nibble, as 99% of its DNA will be destroyed by stomach acid. Or they could just burn it and save a CSI from having to identify a body by a bit of fingernail by wading through a cannibal’s nightsoil.

2016, Lonnie Franklin Jr, known as the ‘Grim Sleeper’ of Los Angeles was convicted of murdering 10 prostitutes. As a garbage collector, he shot, strangled and tossed them in dumpsters, with the nails of one victim leading to his arrest. And again, lacking empathy and seeing these women only as a meal, sex or a souvenir, serial killers often get caught as they’re too focussed on feeding their cruel addiction.

Tendons. With roughly 4000 tendons in the body, stretching 300+ metres (as tall as the Eiffel Tower) - with some as long as a leg, others barely visible to the naked eye and buried 1mm to 9mm deep into muscles and organs - many are impossible to remove. But larger tendons like the Achilles, being rich in collagen, 100 grams provides roughly 22 grams of protein and about 70 calories. Sadly, as tendons are tough and chewy, they require slow cooking over 10 hours before they can be sliced and served.

Other bits, which are probably too complicated for a serial-killer’s pea-sized brain or lack of patience is the spine (which is meaty, fatty and contains 2900 calories), but it requires skill to extract, the central nervous system is expansive being 45 miles long and although our blood vessels stretch 60,000 miles, when ‘The Murino Cannibal’ bit into a throat, he winged “I didn’t like the taste of his veins".  

With some parts of the human body inedible, indigestible and in many cases seemingly indestructible, this is why (laziness aside) many serial killers and cannibals use chemicals to dissolve a body. John George Haigh, the acid bath murderer’s issue was patience, as when sulphuric acid is kept boiling it can dissolve flesh in 40 minutes and bones in 9 hours, but being left at room-temperature, sulphuric struggles to dissolve flesh in 52 hours and bones in 28 days. His issue, of many, was he didn’t let it boil.

2012, Germany, in vats of hydrochloric acid, bone fragments and a green fatty gloop was identified as two men who had been murdered three years earlier. An accomplice was sentenced to 30 months for aiding the disposal, but an unnamed Dutch family were acquitted as (although there was no denying that the barrels contained bodies) murder couldn’t be proven, even though the bodies hadn’t dissolved fully as hydrochloric & sulphuric acids struggle to dissolve the hydrogen atoms in fatty tissue.

As Santiago Meza Lopez, ‘The Pozole Maker’ discovered, even having chopped up and stewed his 300+ victims in barrels of boiling lye, although sodium hydroxide is more effective at destroying flesh than hydrochloric and sulphuric acid, the only chemical which can dissolve fat is acetone or gasoline.

Inspired by Breaking Bad, Thomas Gotthard, a priest from Denmark crammed his lover’s body into a 208-litre barrel of 45 litres hydrochloric acid and 6kg of caustic soda. Having partially dissolved her body, then was forced to remove her remains, cut her up further, burn and rebury her, but still her charred remains contained enough DNA to convict him.

Whereas in the TV series itself, Walter White uses hydrofluoric acid, which dissolves skin fast, but – as Stefano Brizzi found out when he tried to dissolve the body of PC Gordon Semple in South London – it takes several days to destroy muscle, bone and sinew, it leaves great globules of fat, and the resulting gas was so noxious, that the neighbours (and ultimately the police) were alerted.  
Other options include nitric acid, which dissolves the fibres hydrochloric can’t, and deoxycholic acid, which can destroy fat cells, and is widely used by plastic surgeons to remove jowls and double chins.

As discussed, even cremulators, the furnaces used in crematoriums have to work at incredibly high temperatures to destroy all parts of a human body, but a company called Bio-Response in Indiana has developed a fast and environmentally friendly machine which can liquify a body in just 4 to 6 hours.

Mimicking a stomach, it constantly washes and churns the corpse in hot pH-neutral water, and instead of acid, it uses hydrogen to dissolve the molecules at a chemical level. What remains are the bones, which go into a cremulator to be pulverised, but everything else ends up as a brown coffee-like water which is safe enough to dispose of down the sink, and the whole process only costs $500 more than a standard cremation.

Join me tomorrow as we explore whether a true cannibal has a disorder, and wannabes don’t.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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

Of all the parts of a body, nothing epitomises a human more than the four sensory organs in our skull; the eyes, ears, nose and tongue. But do they fascinate serial killers and cannibals, or freak them out?

Andrei Chikatilo, The Rostov Ripper, a serial killer, cannibal and necrophile who murdered at least 52 women and children – it is said - chewed off their noses, cut out their tongues, sliced off their ears, and – having become obsessed with the Victorian theory of retinal optography - many had their eyes gouged out, as he believed that the last image his victims saw was recorded into their retina.

Weighing about 7.5 grams and one and a quarter inches in diameter (the same as a ping pong ball), the eye is composed mostly of water, proteins, lipids and carbohydrates with the cornea made of collagen. Held in place by the optic nerve and the ocular muscles, eyes can only be removed by force or trauma. With the vitreous and aqueous humors made of salts, sugars and proteins, although Dr Jim Stoppani, Yale certified nutritionist said “eyes contain an acidic solution which can make humans sick”, each eye contains 57 calories, the equivalent of 125 grams of apple, 12 grapes or 2 marshmallows.

In 2009, Angelo Mendoza Sr attacked his 4-year-old son and ate his left eye. He was charged with child cruelty, torture, and inflicting an injury to a child, and was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.

The eating of sheep eyes is common across many cultures, and according to those who have; "the trick to eating an eyeball is to keep it in your mouth for as long as possible, it’s slightly squishy, and delivers a succulent pop like a cherry tomato”, with “a rush of fatty flavour with a gelatinous, spongy texture like eating the fat and cartilage from a lamb chop, but a bit better”, and “whilst the inky black liquid” (the aqueous) “seeps down the throat, you’re left with the hard chewy lens like a pigs trachea”. Nice.

Eyes gross us out. In 2022, when Djalma Figueiredo was caught, the headline read ‘Cannibal who 'ate the eyes of victims' captured’ – as (apparently) it’s fine to eat the eyes of a different species, but it’s newsworthy to eat the eyes of our own.

James Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania said, “eyes represent faces… it's through the face that we learn to recognize and empathize with others”, which could be why many killers cover, close or remove their victim’s eyes after death, as once they’re gone, they want the victim to appear less like a human.

Ears. In 1942, at the Battle of Wake Island, veterans recalled “seeing Marines walking around with Jap ears stuck to their belts”. Lacking the symbolism of eyes, ears have long been a sick trophy of war.

As the only visible part of the ear, the pinna is on average 2.5 inches long and weighs just 3-6 grams. Made of skin and ridged cartilage, an ear contains just 25 calories, but it has no flavour and although it only takes 7lbs of pressure to rip an ear off, its texture can only be described as tough and chewy.

Most butchers state “the preparing of ears is tiresome”, as they require the wax to be scraped out and the hairs to be singed “to get rid of any scum”, before being boiled for 2 to 3 hours, then either sliced and heavily seasoned as they can be quite bland, or coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. Although, if you are looking for a bitter and buttery taste, leave the earwax in, as it contains 12.7 calories a gram.

The nose. Across 1997 and 1998, Mikhail Malyshev nicknamed ‘The Perm Cannibal’ was suspected of six murders, who he dismembered and ate. Having killed 16-year-old Natalia Suvorova with an axe, aided by his friends they ground her flesh into mince to make pelmeni (a Russian dumpling). But with the threesome falling out, he bit of the tip of his friends’ nose, chewed it, and then swallowed it,

Excluding the nasal bones, weighing roughly 14 grams, a nose contains 45 calories, and also made of cartridge, it’s neither tasty nor hygienic as we produce 1.5 litres of mucus a day as the nose is our first defence against dust and allergens, and – according to a study by a medical school in Southern California - “the average number of nose hairs in each nostril is 120 in the left and 122 in the right”.

When Andrei Chikatilo murdered his first victim, he bound her, beat her, stabbed her, and (like many others) although he severed her nose, there was no evidence that he ate it. And who can blame him?

The same can be said for the mouth, tongue and vocal cords, the last of the four sensory organs in our skull. In 1973, serial killer Edmund Kemper murdered his abusive mother with a clawhammer and slit her throat. In retaliation for years of humiliation, he cut off her head, screamed at it, smashed in her face, and (sick of her voice) he cut out her tongue and larynx, and threw it down the waste compactor.

But being too tough for the machine, it spat her tough vocal cords back up, of which Ed said “that seemed appropriate, as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years".

As mentioned before, with the tongue “soft, tender with a luxurious taste”, Ed Gein having turned a pair of lips on a window shade drawstring, the windpipe as slightly chewy and the larynx too tough for kitchen equipment, for good reason, few cannibals would consider these organs are suitable snacks.

And rightly, as although the eating of a thigh, a heart or even the genitals is sexually motivated, the sensory organs are symbolic of who a victim was, as most of our memories are sensory experiences.

The idea of retinal optography – where the last image a victim sees (being their death) is imprinted on their eyes - may seem ludicrous to a rational mind, but across many cultures, that theory holds weight in the more superstitious; with a nose retaining its last smell and the ears its last sound, just as often (in a mortuary) a corpse will seem to speak its last word. So, is it really that strange that a serial killer would attempt to destroy every piece of evidence, no matter how silly that may sound?

Join me tomorrow to uncover even more body parts which a cannibal couldn’t or shouldn’t eat.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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 nineteen – the stomach”. (burp)

The stomach is a masterpiece of biology, it digests meat, bone, fat and fibre, and its walls regenerate every 3-4 days so we don’t ingest ourselves, But could a cannibal digest another person’s stomach?

1972, when Flight AF571 crashed in the Andes, Eduardo Strauch recalled of the moment they first ate human flesh; “my mind was okay, but my body rejected it”. Being frozen, it had no smell to repel them, but initially they vomited it back up, as they had broken a sacred taboo. As Catholics, they only way they could accept this sin to save their lives was (as in the Eucharist) to see these as the body of Christ.

As discussed in the last part, although the stomach is a biological marvel, its waste contents aren’t for consumption. So, any undesirable offal would safely (and happily) be eaten by foxes, urine and faeces is good for the soil, and as anyone who lives in a city knows, pigeons will happily eat last night’s vomit.

So, why are serial-killers willing to commit the worst taboos (dismemberment, necrophilia and even cannibalism), and although they often compete to be gross-out each other, they draw the line at what body parts they will eat? But is it a lack of education, an odd moral code, cowardice, or is it queasiness?

In Robert Ressler's book, Whoever Fights Monsters, 40% of serial killers interviewed said they’d been physically abused as a child, with 70% sexually abused. Manifesting in adulthood as rage, isolation, cruelty and a lack of empathy, many suffered from stomach problems; like Dennis Nilsen, John Wayne Gacy, Carroll Cole & Aileen Wuornos to name but as few. And especially cannibals like Albert Fish (who was sadistically beaten as an orphan), Armin Meiwes (who was abandoned by his abusive dad), Jeffrey Dahmer (whose personality changed after a bungled double hernia operation), and Issei Sagawa (whose premature birth plagued him with pain, illness and being unusually short for an adult male).

We’re affected by trauma in different ways, and although our brains may blank it out to protect us, our stomach remembers. The stomach is our second brain, it’s also a vital part of our emotions, and although vomiting is a natural reaction to poison, it is also to trauma, as according to a study by UCLA, “the composition of your gut’s microbiome can be indefinitely impacted by intense trauma”.

Stomach lining needn’t be a traumatic meal for a cannibal, as being 3-4 days old, it’s reliably fresh and although its walls of muscle and mucosa are 2 to 5mm thick, at 1300 calories, that’s half a day’s energy.

In cow’s, stomachs can be prepared by washing, soaking, cutting off any unwanted yellowy brown fat, rubbing it with rock salt and rinsing it with vinegar (a process repeated until the lining is a nice pinkish hue), then scraped with a sharp knife to rid it of any final impurities and par-boil for 10 minutes.

Stomachs are badly maligned by us all. During conflicts, like World War Two, combatants witnessed soldiers on both sides mutilating the bodies of their enemies, with the abdomen ripped open and the stomach filled with discarded rubbish, like chewing gum and cigarette butts, as if it was a waste bin.

A cannibal could eat a whole stomach, and if they bothered to read a cookery book, they’d realise that it could made into a variety of world dishes; in Mexico stomach is thinly sliced, pan fried and served in tacos, in Scotland it’s a vital component of haggis, in Louisiana it’s stuffed with pork, veg, spices and rice and is called ‘Ponce’, and in many countries its rolled up, smoked and is sliced like a fine pepperoni.

But that’s the problem with serial killers and cannibals alike, as although their ‘fans’ love to bore the tits off everyone about ‘how high their IQ is’, they often lack commonsense, patience, a strong enough constitution to do the ‘dirty deed’ in full, and when it comes to preparing and cooking a corpse, they lack the education and courage to turn a dead body into a banquet of delights. But what do you expect from a bunch of maladjusted misfits who live on a diet of burgers, hotdogs and microwave meals.

But as much as stomachs can be made into a meal, it can also be used for cruelty.

2007, Czech Republic, sisters Klara & Katerina Mauerova had a mission from God, or so they believed. Having joined a cult which practiced incest, they confined her sons aged just 14 and 10 to dog cages, left them to sleep in their own filth, starved, beat and burned them, and with the boys screaming, she cut the flesh from their buttocks, and fed it to them. And even though they were often sick from the fear and revulsion, when they threw up, she forced them to eat that too.
Sentenced to between five and ten years, both women are now free, having been paroled.

Join me tomorrow for possibly the most personal pieces of a human to eat… the senses.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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 eighteen – waste”. (burp)

If a human was made only of meat, a cannibal could shave them like a rotisserie of tasty kebab meat and dine like a king. But they aren’t, as 46% of the body is used to process various forms of waste.

2013, Italy, Lino Renzi beat his mother Maria to death, cut her into pieces with a saw, froze the meat, and the neighbours only became suspicious when the intestines he’d popped on the grill caught fire. Being Italian, it was suggested, he was making the local dish - Torcinelli, a sausage stuffed with offal, tomato, onion, basil and parsley. Only this time instead of using lamb’s intestines, he used momma’s.

What parts of a corpse a cannibal eats is dependent on their culture, as although we may retch at an eyeball being burst by the Bedouin, they’d rightly retch at what we put in a haggis or a hotdog.
So, the waste? Excluding the skin, kidneys, liver, lungs and blood which we’ve covered, the excretory or urinary system includes the bladder and the intestines (as well as the rectum and colon). Delicious.

As a passive biological system, which unlike walking and talking, requires us to consciously do nothing, our excretory system expels waste products like solids, liquids and gases. Each day, the average person expels a minimum of 3 litres of sweat, 3 ½ pints of urine, 1500 millilitres of gas, and 400 grams of poo, so across the year that amounts to 320lbs or 145kgs – in effect, we poo the weight of an adult panda.

So, can we eat those organs which process our waste?

Weighing 3 ½ kilos, 15 to 20 ft long and made of a 3-5mm fibrous muscle and a layer of mucus whose wave-like contractions move food through the GI tract, the intestines could provide a cannibal with 6300 calories, enough for 2 ½ days. Described as “tender and fatty with a chewy resistance” and a slightly sweet taste, they have no urine or faecal smell, if they’re cleaned and washed properly.

Chitterlings, cow’s intestines stuffed with offal, herbs and vegetables, and boiled or fried are common across the world. So, with one human’s intestines enough to feed five cannibals for a day, if we made use of the 167,000 people who die daily, the dead could feed the citizens of Charlotte, North Carolina.

The bladder is a tough piece of protein to prepare, so most countries only use it as casings, and at just 32 grams with a wall just 1mm thick, it only contains 12 calories, unlike a cream cracker which has 15, and contains uric acid, ammonia and a parasitic worm which can be transmitted person to person. Or, if you want to go old school, from our annual dead, we could make 60 million 19th century footballs.

As for the rectum, with crispy pig’s rectum being a delicacy in South Korea, as “the red glistening tissue contains mucus glands”, oh yum, you could feed anus to the population of Seoul for 10 whole days. Which I’m sure they’ll love, as long as they ignore the fact that, according to a microbiologist Dr Gerba, even after the average human has wiped their anus, it still has a 10th of a gram of poo stuck to it.

Even in animals, rarely do we eat the waste system as part of our daily diet, so why should a cannibal?

Most unusable parts of an animal are turned into cattle feed, so although we balk at cannibalism, we’re okay with feeding dead chickens to live ones, cow corpses to active moos, and pig stiffs to their own relatives. But for the queasier cannibal, maybe enlisting a furry faithful friend isn’t a bad idea.

Humans are carnivores, whereas dogs are hypercarnivores, who produce 100 times the stomach acid we do, and as scavengers, they can rapidly digest the meat, bones and fat that we’d find impossible.

2018, Mexico, Juan Carlos Bejar & Patricia Martinez Bernal were convicted of 20 counts of torture and murder. With the bodies found in 20-litre buckets buried under concrete, many were missing organs, and although impossible to prove, the hearts were fed to their dogs and some said, other innards too.

But this is not uncommon, as dogs will eat anything. The inspiration for Mason Verger, Doctor Lector’s nemesis in Hannibal by Thomas Harris came from real-life. New York, 1970s, while high on PCP, a man known only as Michael smashed a mirror, sliced off the skin from his face, gouged out one of his eyes, and fed it to a German shepherd and her two puppies. The vet managed to get her to sick up his lips, nose and some of his face, but with her digestive system being so efficient, his face was beyond saving.

Phew! So, after all that grossness, you’re probably thinking “are we finished?” Nope. After the organs comes the waste products, as isn’t that part of a human too? Come on cannibals, don’t be cowardly.

The average human’s colon holds 8-25 lbs (or 11kgs) of faecal matter, and with the bowel never empty, every corpse has a little brown package in transit, containing bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli. If you think a cannibal wouldn’t eat poo, as an example, Mark Redwine of Colorado killed his 13-year-old son Dylan after he found photos of him dressed in a sexy red bra and eating faeces from a nappy.

At 4 calories per gram, we expel 1200 calories down the toilet daily, and although urine can be sterilised to remove its toxins, its unlikely child-killer Albert Fish did this when he drank piss. Sweat comprises of water, salt and electrolytes, but a cannibal would burn more calories trying to drink it. And although many mammals and birds regurgitate food, the Butyric acid we produce in our vomit is highly corrosive to our nose, throat, eyes and lungs. Thank God, as that would be a real bummer at family mealtimes.

But why doesn’t a cannibal (outside of the Aghori tribe) eat human waste?

As said before, the eating of flesh is a sexual practice, the same way as those with coprophilia get an intense sexual arousal from faeces and defecation, and those with urolagnia get the same from urine. People are weird, with it said that 32% of men have fantasized about sex with wee or poo, and women more inclined to queening, or – as a humiliating act against a male man – sitting on the Smother Box. (Note sure what that is, Google it).

Criminal cannibalism isn’t about food, it’s about power, sex and revenge, with many cannibals eating human flesh in retaliation for childhood abuse and trauma. For example; Ed Gein made a skin suit, Dennis Nilsen slept with dead bodies, and Robert Black took snaps of himself with a wine bottle up his ass. So is eating waste any more embarrassing? Maybe they are appalled by it, or maybe like poo fetishists, they keep quiet about their dirty habits, as even for a cannibal, some perversions are a step too far.

Join me tomorrow as we explore if a cannibal’s stomach can digest another person’s stomach.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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 seventeen – the liver”. (burp)

Like Hannibal Lector, could a cannibal eat a census-takers liver with a nice chianti? Maybe.

1990, North Korea, Park Myung-sik nicknamed The Organ Harvester scoured the farms of rural villages in search of fit young teens. Across 7 months, at least 9 of his 13 known victims were found stabbed, with their abdomens ripped open. Only this specific cannibal wasn’t a bit peckish, as being an alcoholic with chronic cirrhosis, he mistakenly believed that by eating healthy livers, it would cure his disease.

As the largest organ in the torso, the liver weighs 3lbs or 1 ½ kilos, and as a dark-red organ shaped like a cone, it sits on the right of the abdomen, under the diaphragm and above the stomach. But it’s not just there to filter the alcohol when we’ve had too much booze, the liver is a multi-functional organ.

Holding 13%, roughly a pint of your blood at one time, the liver stores nutrients, removes waste, filters chemicals, metabolises medications, produces bile for breaking down fats, and clotting agents for blood. Divided into two main lobes and subdivided into 100,000 smaller lobes, it regulates blood sugar levels, it produces heat to maintain our body temperature, it helps keep our mind healthy and toxin-free, and is the only organ which can regenerate itself, and you can survive with 70% of it removed.

In 1847, Jeremiah Johnson of Wyoming, known as ‘liver eating Johnson’ launched a vendetta against the native American Flathead tribe after the murder of his wife. For which he scalped 300+ Crow Indians and ate their livers. But as either a myth, rumour, or exaggeration spawned in an era where the barely literate got their facts from ‘dime novels’, it’s possible that this was a lie to induce fear.

With just 10% fat, 33% blood and not being a muscle but a gland, the human liver contains just 2500 calories, barely enough to keep a cannibal alive for a single day. As a source of energy, it’s poor, but being so nutrient dense – storing vitamins A, D, E, K, B12, iron and copper – the liver is a super food.

So, could a cannibal eat a liver with fava beans and a nice chianti? No… at least, not in one sitting.

If you ate another person’s liver, you’d receive half the toxic dose of Vitamin A in a single hit. Known as Hypervitaminosis, even palaeolithic cannibals knew the danger of liver toxicity, with too much eaten leading to vomiting, delirium, and death. So, I hate to be the party pooper Dr Lector, but with any more than 100grams of liver being too toxic for a human, a whole liver would take you 15 days to eat.

That said, by those guidelines, with 167,000 people dying each day, if we put our morals aside, 100 grams of liver a day would make a little over half a million pounds of half decent pate, enough to keep the entire population of Paris happy (or less miserable) for the rest of their baguette chomping lives.

Being bitter and sweet, like pig’s liver, human liver would be suitable for stews, or panfried with onions and bacon. With no gristle, little fat or sinew and no bone, it need little preparation or cooking, as being soft, silky and lean, anything more than medium-rare would make it taste like an old boot. And as a permeable organ, it also suits being smoked, or flavoured with chilli, red wine or peppercorn.

When removing a cadaver’s liver, although possibly too drunk to know, ‘The Organ Harvester’ of North Korea could possibly tell if a liver was off, as a fresh liver is a rich reddish brown and is slightly firm, but an off liver is pale and slippery. And if the victim also has cirrhosis, their capillaries above their waist would be burst like small red spiders, the whites of their eyes would have a yellow hue (as they can’t process a pigment called bilirubin), the liver would smell of ammonia, and unable to regenerate itself, it would be scarred. And as human meat isn’t vetted like animals, there is no way to tell if it has blood diseases like Hepatitis, without prior medical knowledge.

1997 to 2000, in Ryazan, Russia, Igor Churasov nicknamed The Scavenger of Humanity murdered seven people with an accomplice in the wake of the collapse of Communism and the starvation of its people. Strangling his victims, on one occasion with a hose, he cut up their corpses, pulled out their hearts and livers, popped them in a frying pan, and ate them. But did he die of hypervitaminosis? No. As although hungry, they shared the livers between them, and ate it over a few days. They’re psychotic, not stupid.

Join me tomorrow to explore if it’s possible to eat a person’s poop-chute… the waste system. Oh, nice.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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 fifteen – the kidneys”. (burp)

It’s odd that cannibal will eat hearts, brains and eyeballs, but you rarely hear of them eating a kidney.

It was in the mid-19th century penny dreadful series ‘The String of Pearls’ that Thomas Prest unleashed the seemingly fictional account of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd. As a typical British story of class, poverty and money, Todd slit the throats of his wealthy customers, robbed and flipped his barber’s chair so their bodies slid into the basement where Mrs Lovett made them into savory pies.

Nicknamed ‘the pie eaters’ by Germans, British people love pies, especially when topped with a thick crust, made of off-cuts of offal, sprinkled with a stingy assortment of six peas, and drenched in gravy. And yet, you rarely hear of a cannibal, especially a British one, turning the victim’s kidneys into pies.

Located below the rib cage on either side of the spine, the kidneys are two bean-shaped organs about the size of a fist, which remove waste from the blood, produce urine and help control blood pressure. Although relatively small, they filter 50 gallons / 200 litres of blood a day, roughly 2 ½ baths, and able to generate Vitamin D, when your skin and liver fails to process it, your kidneys will finish the job.

In Steve, our average UK male, it’s normal that his right kidney weighs 130 grams, and the left one is heavier as it’s slightly higher and closer to the heart. According to the study of paleolithic era cannibals, the kidneys are ranked among the least calorific body parts with just 375 calories each, barely enough for a single meal. Dr Jim Stoppani, a Yale nutritionist said “kidneys are filled with waste so best to avoid those”, and yet they are incredibly nutritious, as a single kidney would fulfil a cannibals recommended daily intake of vitamins B1, B2, B6, B12, copper, niacin, folate, biotin, iron, zinc and selenium, helping to provide greater energy, lesser risk of cancer and heart diseases, and a stronger immune system.

In 1963, Czechoslovakian child-killer Josef Kulík lured two young boys - Vladimír (aged 6) and Oldřich (aged 9) - into a car, attacked them with an axe, cut their stomachs open, masturbated over the bodies, roasted their intestines and offal over a fire and ate it. Later found wrapped in a handkerchief was the boy’s kidneys, as well as a spleen and a heart. Like others, this cannibal derived a sexual thrill from the killing and ingesting of body parts, but for whatever reason, neither kidney was eaten.

Lacking the heart’s symbolism, kidneys are unfairly lumped with other offal like the intestines and the tongue. In the brutality against the Taiwanese Formosa tribe by Chinese Army in 1981, having killed a tribesman, “the head was severed and exhibited.... the body was either divided among its captors and eaten, or sold to high officials… with the kidney, liver, heart, and soles of the feet considered the most desirable portions, and they were cut up into small pieces, boiled, and eaten in the form of soup”.

So, why don’t cannibals tend to eat the kidneys if they’re so tasty and nutritious? Possibly the smell, as kidneys have a pungent aroma of urine, and when the urine crystallises, they form kidney stones.

Also, like the heart and other offal, kidneys require preparation, which as consumers we don’t realise as when purchased they are pre-prepared by a skilled butcher to remove the membrane, the filament layer, the fat lobe, the connective tissue and are soaked in salt water and lime to remove the stench.

Chef Delia Smith wrote “provided they’re cored and washed, they should have no trace of urine”, and being flavoursome, “they make a superb meat for curries”, or if flash-fried, “they have a tender texture and a deep, slightly gamey flavor” said to be “silky and rewarding”, but only if prepared properly.

Only in fiction do we hear of cannibals with a refined enough palate to know how to cook a delicate and flavoursome piece of meat as the kidney, as often being nothing but uncouth yobs, they might as well munch on a Big Mac. And although in Britain we traditionally put kidneys in pies, stewing makes them tough and leathery, so again, if prepared properly, a kidney is best served flash-fried in clarified butter, or with cayenne pepper, cream and a bit of paprika, you’ve got yourself a devilled kidney. Yum.

The nearest we get to a real-life Sweeney Todd & Mrs Lovett is Dmitry & Natalia Baksheeva ‘The Krasnodar Cannibals’, who killed dozens over 18 years, which they documented in videos, kept detailed recipes of and boasted that they baked the flesh and offal into pies which they sold to cafes.

Having feasted on human remains for two decades, it’s no surprise that in 2020, Dimitri died of type one diabetes, as (although hard to prove) it was suspected that with kidneys being high in cholesterol and likely to cause hemochromatosis, that (ironically) it was their victim’s own offal which killed him.

Join me tomorrow as we explore another delicacy among the offal… the lungs.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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 eleven – the yummy bits”. (burp)

Thighs and buttock are the go-to hunks of meat that all cannibals love, which makes sense.

Joachim Kroll, known as ‘The Ruhr Cannibal’ was a serial killer, paedophile and necrophile who savaged at least eight women and girls in the Ruhr region of Germany from 1955 to 1976. Slicing off ‘steak sized’ cuts from each of their buttocks and thighs, with girls some being as young as four, he claimed it was “a tender meat”, and serving them with carrots and potatoes, he did it he said “to save on grocery bills”.

As a sadist, it’s likely his motive wasn’t financial but sexual, but with thighs being packed full of calories (13,300 for those on Steve our average UK male), it has the second highest calories of the main muscles, with roughly 15,500 for the buttocks, 7400 for the biceps, 4500 for the calves, and just 1700 for both forearms.

But what are the tastiest parts of a human body?

As seen with ‘The Ruhr Cannibal’, the buttocks known as Gluteus Maximus are the largest and heaviest muscle in the body. Said by Ugandan warlords to be “flavoursome” owing to the intermuscular fat, it has a balance of “tenderness and texture being rich and gelatinous”, and ideal for a slow cooked stew.

But as Heriberto Lazcano, kingpin of the Los Zetas cartel knew, stressed meat makes for bad meat, as stress increases its pH level, making it darker, firmer and drier. As a mad Mexican who loved roasting his enemy’s buttocks, before being murdered, he made them bathe for two hours, gave them whiskey to reduce their adrenaline, and then served thin slivers of their backsides as tasty tamales on toast.

The tongue is said to be “soft, tender with a luxurious taste” according to a Ugandan vendor in Lugazi where human meat is sold. As a 3 inch long by 1 inch wide muscle weighing roughly 100grams, the papillae and mucous membrane are said to give it a light crackling when seared, and although a favourite of Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo who severed his victim’s lips, nipples and tongues with his teeth, there’s no solid proof that he ate them.

Famously, fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecktor preferred a person’s liver and their sweetbreads, and many chefs agree. Sold in high end restaurants, sweetbreads refer to the thymus gland, a vital part of all immune systems as it trains T-cells. Called ‘sweet’ in calves as they have “a mild, less savoury flavour than lamb or beef”, in human’s it weighs just 40–50 grams, and situated between the lungs and behind the breastbone, it is suggested “it is really creamy, with a smooth and velvety texture” like oysters.

An unnamed surgeon suggested the face, as being used for eating and emoting, unlike our skeletal muscles, they are “thin, soft, rarely tear, have a low fat-content” and with 30 muscles on each side of the face, the best could be around the jaw. Back in 2012, Rudy Eugene, dubbed ‘The Causeway Cannibal’ was shot and killed by police officers as he ate the face (including the eyebrows, nose, cheek, some of the forehead and the left eye) of fellow homeless man Ronald Poppo. With drugs ruled out as a cause, and with no known motive for his cannibalistic crime, hunger was ruled out as – unlike with most supposed cannibals - an autopsy determined that Rudy had no human flesh in his stomach.

The cheeks are said to be the meatiest parts of a sheep or cow’s face, having evolved for grazing, but with human cheeks being between 30 and 65 mm thick, they would hardly make a sufficient meal.

The eating of another person’s face is likely to be more symbolic than a culinary choice, like in 1995, when Marinaldo de Alcântara Silva, a Brazilian farmer shot his own mother following a long and bitter dispute, he then decapitated her, ripped off her eyes, lips, nose and tongue, and then ate the pieces”.

What’s lacking within cannibals is class. Jeffrey Dahmer ate his meat with ketchup. Isakin Drabbad the Skara Cannibal of Sweden murdered his girlfriend and ate the flesh of her arms and legs, which he pan-fried with salt and home-grown cannabis. And Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, the prolific child molester and suspected cannibal was said to have served the meat of a child at a neighbourhood barbeque.

But eating human flesh needn’t be so uncultured. According to Damien Casten of Candid Wines, there are suitable wines for each piece of meat, stating; "I'd guess that uncooked face is chewy. If there’s no time to braise, I'd need a ton of acid to cut through the 'meat,' so I'm going to pull a young grand cru Riesling”, for the delicacy of the brain “the grey matter is best paired with a Chenin Blanc”, a liver wouldn’t suit nice Chianti as Hannibal Lecktor suggests “as it’s a little too light for the fattiness of the liver… so a Barolo would be better choice", with the sweetbreads suiting “the Lopez Malbec owing to its cherry flavours and aromas”, whereas other sommeliers suggested “pinot noir for the cheeks, shiraz for the tongue, and beer for the nose and lips”. Interestingly, Nic Pelaez of Saltbox Dining suggested for the flesh “I would pick a meaty person, a smoker, someone who enjoys berries”, basically “the lazier the better - they’re more tender. So I’d stick to couch potatoes and video-gamers".

But when questioned, many medical experts agreed that the best human meat to eat was the Psoas, known as the loin muscles. Situated inside the pelvis, they connect the legs to the vertebrae, and being almost fat-free, once the tendon is removed, they are soft, tender and are regarded as the “human filet mignon”. And with only 40% of humans having a psoas minor, for cannibals, that muscle would be a rare delicacy.

So, you were wrong Jeffrey Dahmer, the filet mignon of meats wasn’t the thigh, and being a scumbag, he probably threw away the best bits, and washed a thigh down with a god-awful beer like Budweiser. Yuck.

Join me tomorrow to uncover what are the worst parts of a human body to eat.

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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.  

Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.

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 nine – hair”. (burp)

Whether you’re blessed with a bouffant or as bald as a coot, you won’t be shocked to hear that hair isn’t the kind of tasty treat that even the most famished cannibal would consider chowing down on.

2016, Blake Leibel, the director of a horror film unironically called Bald, beat and tortured his girlfriend, Iana Kasian over six hours, drained her body of blood, dismembered her, scattered her limbs, and with a razor blade, he scalped the long dark hair from her head as well as half of her face and her right ear.

Scalping, like skinning has been symbolic of domination as far back as 5000 years BC. For the Ancient Greeks, hair had long signified a person’s status, rank or tribe, as well as breeding, wealth and brains. But as wars ravaged the world, seeking to humiliate our foes, whereas once body parts like the heads were taken to be paraded as war trophies, the skulls were scalped solely to make them easier to carry.

For a cannibal, the scalp is nothing but a souvenir or a byproduct, as even when they are tucking into a face, a bicep or a thigh, the last thing they want to be munching on is a mouthful of hair. Therefore, you won’t be surprised to hear that we have no dietary guidelines by the NHS on hair consumption, nor any data on its calorific value by paleolithic era cannibals, as rightly, when it’s on meat, they would either skin it or burn it off.

Hair is a remnant of our long-forgotten past, when as hunter gatherers, our fur kept us warm.

Made of layers of a hardened protein called keratin, most people should have 100-150,000 Terminal hairs on their head and 5 million shorter Vellus hairs over their body, with each follicle able to last up to 7 years as they have their own muscle, nerve and blood supply. And although hair seems to continue growing, once the follicle is visible, it is dead, along with our nails, most of our skin cells and parts of our teeth.

Canadian serial-killer Bruce McArthur kept photographs of his victim’s deaths and how he humiliated their corpses. In a motive known only to him, he posed their bodies wearing a fur coat, a black leather hat, smoking a cigar, and symbolically he shaved their heads and beards, keeping the hair in Ziploc bags. Oddly, although he wasn’t a cannibal, it was actually an alarming post by a fantasist going under the alias of Chefmate50 on the cannibal fantasy forum Zambian Meat which led to McArthur’s arrest.

So, why don’t we eat hair? We don’t because we can’t digest it. Even in our stomachs which contain 1 ½ litres of gastric juice with a pH level of 1.5 and made of a lethal mix of hydrochloric acid, potassium chloride and sodium chloride - so powerful it can dissolve most metals - it can’t dissolve keratin. And with our acid averaging 98.6 Fahrenheit (37 Celsius), Keratin doesn’t break down until 230C (450F).

If we swallow an occasional hair, it wouldn’t do us any harm, as it will pass harmlessly out of the gut, But anything more can cause Trichobezoars (also known as hairballs) which can become lodged in the gastrointestinal tract resulting in vomiting, anemia, obstruction, bowel perforation and even death.

As scavengers covered in fur, cats and dogs have evolved to cope with hair balls, and with the pH level of their stomach swinging from 7.3 (neutral) to 1.5 (similar to battery acid), although still toxic, they can cope, whereas – being almost hairless humans - coughing up hair balls is a skill we have lost.

That said, hair is also a haven for bacteria, fungi and yeast, as well as a wealth of hazardous chemicals that many of our scalps are subjected to, such as peroxide, sulphates, parabens and formaldehyde.

So, it seems that unless a serial killer with cannibal tendencies has developed the skill to hack up a fur ball, it’s unlikely they’ll have a penchant for eating human hair. Most victim’s hair is scalped, binned or kept as a souvenir, but given that its DNA can last for centuries (in the right conditions), if cooked at above 230C in an oven, hair becomes as brittle as a powder, and most of its DNA will be destroyed.

Hair can be deadly, but without you knowing it, you may be ingesting hair daily. L-Cysteine is an amino acid used in the mass production of bread. Often made from duck feathers to give your loaf a soft and bouncy texture for longer, according to the Health Freedom Alliance, having first been dissolved in acid, “most of it is extracted from a cheap and abundant natural protein source - human hair”. So, think about that the next time you tuck into a sliced white, a pizza, a tortilla, and even (gulp) a cake.

Join me tomorrow for the vampire’s source of energy – blood.