So what does human flesh taste like? The answer: just like veal.
American adventurer William Buehler Seabrook wrote of his experiences in his book Jungle Ways, published in 1931. He noted that human flesh actually tastes ‘just like veal’…
….The account follows his travels in West Africa, where he spent time with the Guero people, and joined them as they feasted on human meat.
The author observed that the raw flesh looked like beef but less red and with pale yellow fat.
Once cooked it turned grey and smelled like beef.
Armin Meiwes killed and ate a volunteer who answered an online advertGerman cannibal Armin Meiwes killed and ate a volunteer who answered an online advert. He described the taste as ‘like pork’
As for the taste, he wrote: ‘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.’
Seabrook’s account is regarded as unreliable by many, because he later confessed Guero tribesmen refused to let him take part in their tradition – bizarrely claiming he made up for the disappointment by obtaining the body of a dead hospital patient in France and cooking it on a spit.
But experts regard his description as the most useful – because most commentaries on cannibalism come from the criminally insane and are often contradictory.
German killer Armin Meiwes,insisted human flesh tastes like pork, ‘but a little bit more bitter, stronger.’
While Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa described it as ‘tender and soft’ like tuna.
I always wondered what Aunt Edna Parmesan would taste like.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.