What is Cannibalism? Is it still happening?

Did you know that cannibalism used to be a popular medical remedy???

Cannibalism the eating of human flesh by another human being or the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food.

That’s right. In 17th century, Europeans would ingest ground up mummies for headaches, human fat, blood and bones were used to treat everything from Gout to nosebleeds. Yet, cannibalism is largely absent and morally frowned upon today.

Lets forget the social quagmire. there are plenty of reasons why you shouldn’t eat people. For the basics to be touched, we know that human meat is surprisingly low source of calories compared to other red meats.

According to one random study, human muscle contains about 1300 calories per kilogram. That’s less than a beef and nothing compared to Bear and Boar meat. now, people might think that, this would actually make human burgers a great low calorie alternative, untill you remember that you are probably trying to eat humans because you are starving to death. So, low calorie is the opposite of what you want.

It turns out we carry some pretty nasty diseases that make 24hour food poisoning look like the sniffles. eat someone raw and you risk contracting any bloodborne diseases they carry. But even if you cook the meat, it still wont always go so well for you.

case in point are the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. These people would eat the body, brain of the deceased family members out of cultural tradition. But gratefully this practice stopped after hundreds of people died in and around 1950’s and 60’s from an otherwise rare neurological disorder which they’ve contracted from eating the infected human brains.

The brain tissue contained prions, deadly misfolded proteins that form spongy holes in your brain. They survive the cooking process and if eaten are highly contagious. On the legal side of things, cannibalism falls into a gray area. Oddly enough, cannibalism itself isn’t illegal in the US or UK, but you probably committed some crime along the way to get that slab of meat. Grave robbing, desecration of corpse, murder and maybe all. One exception that won’t put you behind the bars is….if you eat yourself. Also, they gave the name for this self eating process too. This auto eating/ self eating process is called, AutoCannibalism. The most common example today is called Placentophagy, is when a women eats her placenta after giving birth . the idea is that it could raise energy levels and reduce the risk of postpartum depression by stabilizing harmones. But it’s still under process, because the science is still out there looking for the actual answers.

But regardless, this ancient practices have found a new life in western culture. Kim Kardashian and Alicia Silverstone have reportedly done it and there are numerous US companies that will grind your placenta into powder, so that you can take it like a vitamin supplement.

So, this is all i know and mostly you should know about Cannibalism