For anyone out there who was thinking about dabbling in some light cannibalism, I’ve got some bad news for you. Turns out, as reported by Reuters, researchers from Poland and the Czech Republic have concluded that cannibalism is bad for your health. Man, it’s like everything is bad for you nowadays.
Led by Michal Misiak of the University of Wroclaw and Petr Turecek of Charles University in Prague, the study wasn’t trying to settle the question of whether eating people is morally wrong. We settled that one a long time ago, and there isn’t much gray area. We might let it slide if your soccer team’s plane crashes in the Andes, but we will not abide by nonemergency human consumption.
Instead, the researchers took a novel approach, adopting an objective view of the human body as a source of meat and asking whether it’s even worth eating. Does it provide you with the nutrition you need?
Researchers Confirm Cannibalism Is Bad for Your Health
Calorically, not really. A person is, at best, an okay meal. Not especially filling. The problem is that humans are all biologically nearly identical to each other, meaning if a person you’re eating has some kind of contagious illness, you can get it by chowing down on them. Kuru, for instance, was one such fatal neurological disease that was commonly found among indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea who cooked and ate their dead as a part of their grieving rituals.
Using a mathematical model, researchers crunched the numbers and found that long-term cannibalism dramatically increases the spread of diseases like kuru and mad cow, which are classified as prion diseases usually caused by misfolded proteins that can survive being grilled, sautéed, baked, broiled, fried, or braised.
Researchers argue that the spread of diseases is likely one of the big reasons cannibalism became one of the human race’s biggest taboos. Not that it’s weird to eat a fellow person, but that it could potentially make you sick. Once again, humanity is proving that its priorities are completely out of whack.