As global warming worsens and food shortages increase, cannibalism might become the solution for staying alive.

By Jessie Schiewe

Photo: Jeffrey W/Flickr — *Photo:* *Jeffrey W/Flickr*

In the future, a Sloppy Joe sandwich might literally be made from a guy named Joe.

For most of us, this probably doesn’t sound appetizing. The thought of eating a fellow human being not only seems morally wrong, but who’s to say our meat tastes any good in the first place?

We might soon have an answer to that though. Scientists preparing for the extreme weather conditions and global crises that climate change will inevitably cause are increasingly eyeing alternative sources of nourishment to help the human race survive.

Protein-rich insects, like crickets and worms, which are already consumed in some cultures, are one food option being considered. Human flesh is another.

The idea of cannibalism to supplement our future food supply is relatively new, originally put forth in 2018 by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead of slicing and dicing our species, he suggested using tissue cultures to grow “clean meats” in laboratory settings.

Photo: Lesya Dolyk/Flickr — *Photo:* *Lesya Dolyk/Flickr*

In fact, it’s something that’s already being experimented with — but with animal cells, not human ones.

The keeping and eating of livestock is responsible for almost 15% of global warming emissions thanks to the methane the animals produce and the carbon released through land clearing and fertilizer usage.

The thinking goes that if a majority of humans switch to eating artificially grown animal products, we might be able to undo some of the damage we’ve already done to our planet.

But we still have a long way to go before in vitro animal products hit grocery store shelves, which is why scientists are continuing to entertain ulterior solutions — or at the very least, coping methods — to prepare for the future.

Last fall, the suggestion of eating human flesh came up once more at a gastroenterology summit in Stockholm, Sweden. Swedish scientist Magnus Söderlund asked the audience if they could imagine eating their fellow Homo sapiens if our worst case predictions for the future came to be.

Could we get used to the taste of our own meat? he asked. Might we even be able to overcome our revulsion of cannibalism?

Cannibalism, of course, is nothing new. Scientists are even pretty sure Neanderthals ate one another, after researchers found nibbled-on bones from 100,000 years ago in a cave in France.

Photo: Marius Boatca/Flickr — *Photo:* *Marius Boatca/Flickr*

This was no Hannibal Lecter behavior, but rather, like it might be for us, a survival tactic employed to avoid starvation. At that point in time, the Earth was undergoing a rapid period of warming that decimated animal communities, leaving little to no food sources for early man to consume. Grim though it may have been, consuming the flesh of a fellow Neanderthal might have been a last — and only — resort to dodge death.

Today, there are no federal laws in the U.S. banning cannibalism outright, but laws against murder, purchasing or selling human meat, and desecrating a corpse make chomping on thy neighbor difficult to carry out, as well as less appealing to those who’d rather not end up in prison for the rest of their life.

The one exception to this is people who eat placentas after childbirth.

It’s an entirely legal practice that is usually taken up by new mothers. Despite a lack of scientific research supporting it, those who eat the tissue formed during pregnancy believe it can prevent postpartum depression, reduce postpartum bleeding, increase milk supply, and provide a surge of important micronutrients, like iron.

You can even find YouTube videos with suggestions on how best to prepare placenta (Bolognese, anyone?). Those who’ve tried it say it tastes similar to liver.

Human flesh likely tastes different than placenta, but only a very small number of people would know this, because only a very small number of people have actually eaten another person.

Even though it’s not something you regularly hear about in the news, cannibalism does still happen.

Here are some recent accounts of humans eating fellow humans:

In Russia during April of 2018, a 22-year-old man and his 12-year-old “girlfriend” consumed the eyeball, heart, and brain, among other body parts, of their landlord, whom the man murdered with an ax.
Once caught, the man — who was also charged with pedophilia — confessed to boiling certain body parts and microwaving the head for three minutes before eating them.
The young girl, known only as Valeria, also spoke in length about her cannibalistic meal. She told of using a frying pan to cook the landlord’s heart, which tasted “too sweet” unlike “the brains [which] turned out to be much more tasty.”
The man was arrested and spent four months in a coma under the watch of an armed guard, following injuries sustained from an attempt to kill himself. He died before the end of the year.
Valeria, meanwhile, was not charged due to her young age and the fact that she hadn’t participated in the murder itself. She was sent to an orphanage and state school in southern Russia, but that plan backfired within a month.
According to parents of the other schoolchildren, Valeria wouldn’t stop “bragging” about having eaten human flesh or describing to others what human brain tastes like.
She was ultimately removed from the school and is reportedly now schooled in private at the orphanage by a singular teacher.

Seven people in South Africa were arrested and two were given life-sentences in 2018 for murdering a 24-year-old woman whom they later severed and consumed.
Police learned of the crime after one of the men, a so-called traditional healer named Mbatha, walked into a local police station and handed himself over. He was carrying a bag containing a human leg and a hand, and told officers he wanted to surrender because he was “tired of eating human flesh.”
The officers refused to believe him until he took them to a house where more body parts were found. It was later determined that the woman was killed specifically with cannibalism in mind.

Around 2010, a married Russian couple reportedly not only killed and ate more than 30 victims, but they also cooked their victims’ remains into meat pies which they attempted to sell to restaurants and cafes.
Fortunately, they weren’t successful in breaking into the food industry, but the wife did manage to sell some of the human meat pies to the military trainees and student pilots attending the academy where she worked.
Police found seven bags of human body parts in the couples’ refrigerator and freezer, along with a plethora of cellphones belonging to their victims and videos on how to cook human meat.
And apparently the husband and wife weren’t just experimenting with baking human meat pies, either. They’d made at least one jar of pickled human remains and prepared multiple cans of steamed human meat. Police also discovered 19 slices of human skin in their kitchen.

Diners at a vegetarian restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, unwittingly consumed the remains of a murdered man in 2018 after bits and pieces of his body were served in their food.
The restaurant owner had allegedly gotten into a fight with the 61-year-old victim, who had been a frequent patron of the eatery. He was killed in the process and the owner decided to dispose of the body by serving it to his customers.
Since it was a vegetarian restaurant, the additional meat, unsurprisingly, did not go unnoticed. The customers reported the restaurant to the authorities who made the macabre discovery that it wasn’t animal meat they’d been served, but human.

If and when the day comes that climate change leads us to cannibalism, hopefully we’ll at least be fully aware of what we’re consuming.

And who knows? Maybe things will turn around and get better with the environment, so that we don’t have to resort to eating the other other white meat after all.

And, if that’s not a possibility, then here’s hoping we’re all long dead before cannibalism becomes the norm.