Greg Foot, a BBC science presenter, wanted to know what human meat tastes like. He filmed himself while having a biopsy taken from his own thigh.
In his YouTube show, BritLab's "Secrets of Everything," Foot wanted to find out whether human meat tastes like chicken, beef, or pork. He wasted no time to look for volunteers to take on his experiment – Foot presented himself for biopsy.
The biopsy taken from his right hip was a connective tissue. He explains that the sample taken was similar to the type of muscle found on chicken breast but also has similar fibers that can be found in cuts of beef.
Since it is illegal in the UK to eat human flesh and Foot is not willing to do it anyway, Foot employed the help of an expert to analyze, for the first time, the aroma of a cooked human flesh.
Food's aroma makes up about 80 percent of the total composition of its flavor. In fact, an article published by Scientific American states that smell does not only influence how we perceive taste or flavor but is a vital part of it.
A microscopic analysis of Foot's connective tissue was done before it was chemically tested and cooked in a machine that traps aroma. The process was able to produce a cooked human meat that smells like "beef and ale stew."
"It's really meaty ... a lot richer than pork or chicken," Foot shared.
Foot went further into his experiment and concocted a burger with the human taste using pork and lamb.
Although the smell of the cooked "human meat" was not appetizing, the meat tastes good.
"I think it's the closest I'm ever going to get to tasting human, and I tell you what, it's pretty good," Foot said.
Eating human flesh, even your own, is punishable by law. Britain does not have a law for cannibalism but punishment falls under the murder or desecration of corpses. It was formally banned in Britain in the 1800s.
Cannibalism also stirred a debate when Jose Salvador Alvarenga, a castaway, was believed to have resorted to eating his companion in order to survive.
