What human flesh tastes like – as Gregg Wallace ‘samples human meat’

Channel 4 viewers were left disgusted last night after watching a bizarre program that appeared to show Gregg Wallace eating human flesh. The satirical documentary, called ‘ Gregg Wallace: British Miracle Meat’, saw the controversial presenter tour a factory that manufactured ‘engineered human meat’, before trying it himself. While the program was a parody, many viewers admitted to falling for it, with one tweeting that it made cannibalism widely accepted to be very wrong, yet some have let curiosity get the better of them. MailOnline takes a look at the accounts of those who have tried it. 

Back in the 1920s, American adventurer William Buehler Seabrook set out to provide a detailed record of the societies that devour human flesh. He even went so far as to taste it himself when he met with the Guero people in West Africa and wrote of his experiences in his book ‘Jungle Ways’, published in 1931.  ‘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.’

The survivors of a 1972 Andes plane crash had to eat their fellow passengers to survive but found the frozen flesh flavorless. Survivor Nando Parrado recalled eating without guilt, saying, “I was eating to live.” Last year, Russian killer Vladimir Nikolayevich Nikolayev spoke about eating human flesh for the first time in 1997. He boiled and fried the meat but didn’t like its raw taste. He was caught after selling it at an open market, claiming it was kangaroo meat, but it was found to contain human blood during examination. 

Due to the taboo nature, few scientific studies have explored the taste of cooked human flesh. It resembles red meat like beef due to myoglobin. Some experiments suggested it smells meaty and resembles beef and ale stew. Cannibalism is not explicitly illegal, but acts leading to it are. Some experts propose it as a solution to food scarcity in the future.  In 2006, researchers developed a robot that identified hands as bacon and prosciutto, giving legs to a pork-like taste. Read the full story: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12334803/What-does-human-meat-taste-like-Scientists-reveal-?ito=msngallery

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