Cooking With Cannibals: A pound of human flesh has just a measly 650 calories.
Cooking With Cannibals
Today, in the jungles of New Guinea, the Korowai tribe are among the last cultures to practice cannibalism. To them, it is a revenge ritual. The act of consuming human flesh is a bid to ward off evil, particularly the khakhua—a demonic creature that brings inexplicable death and must be killed, dismembered, and eaten by the cannibals to be stopped.
Everything is consumed, except for the teeth, hair, bones, fingernails, toenails, penis, and head, which are kept as trophies and displayed as warnings for other khakhua.
From rituals like this to history and horror stories, cannibalism has remained a taboo topic.
Pre-history
In 2010, 800,000-year-old butchered bones were found in Spain’s Gran Dolina Cave, indicating that cannibalism was rife among western Europe’s cavemen. But, a mammoth would make for a much better prehistoric dinner party platter. Let’s talk nutrition facts:
One mammoth can feed 25 hungry Neanderthals for a month, but cannibalizing a human would provide the crowd with only a third of a day’s calories. For our size, we aren’t packed with a ton of juicy calories. According to estimates, boars and beavers pack about 1,800 calories into each pound of muscle compared to a measly 650 calories from a modern human.
