It’s a question as old as time: What does human meat taste like? Is it sweet, savory, gamey, or all of the above? From the way most people look, you would expect the taste of human flesh to be oily, or maybe even stringy, but according to the cannibals cataloged here, we actually taste pretty good. If you’re pretending that you’ve never thought about what your ribs would taste like after a couple of hours on the grill, then you need to stop lying to yourself and admit that you're morbidly curious. What does human taste like? Keep reading to find out.
Every couple of years, someone will be arrested for cannibalism, but the hungry human hunters usually don't discuss what the person tasted like. Luckily, there are a few cannibals who are happy to chat about that delicious human meat taste and even give up a few recipes.
Depending on where they live, some cannibals eat their targets raw, some put them in a stew, and others simply toss the loose human meat into a sandwich and give it to their neighbors. If you aren’t grossed out yet and your mouth is watering at the question, "What do people taste like?" then you’re in luck, because these fine young(ish) cannibals were happy to share their experiences of chomping down on a human being. What does human flesh taste like? You’re about to find out in a big way.
Flesh Biopsied from a Thigh Tastes Like Beef And Ale Stew
You know when you get an idea that you have to see through to the end? That's what happened to Greg Foot when he decided to have a piece of his upper thigh biopsied so he could find out what human meat tastes like. Because cannibalism is illegal in England (boooo!), Foot had the meat from his thigh analyzed so he could construct a human thigh meat avatar that he could eat legally.
Scientific research aside, it's a little disappointing that Foot didn't nosh on his leg meat and tell the queen to deal with it. He said it tasted like beef and ale stew.
Jeffrey Dahmer began fantasizing about slaying and eating people from a young age, and by the time he was on his final run of slayings in the late '80s, he was experimenting with a variety of body parts - so much so that he knew that some cuts were better than others. According to an FBI interview, Dahmer would cook "thighs, biceps, and various internal organs" in a stovetop skillet before consuming them. He told one FBI agent that the taste was reminiscent of filet mignon.
But before you think of Dahmer like some kind of greedy cannibal that kept his food to himself, he was always happy to share with his neighbors. In fact, one of Dahmer's former neighbors, Pamela Bass, still isn't sure what was in a sandwich that Dahmer made her one day before he was apprehended. Bass admits, "I have probably eaten someone's body part."
Albert Fish Thought Human Meat Was 'As Sweet As A Nut'
"The Grey Man," as he was called by many who knew him, was a literal boogeyman who spent his days working as a sanitarium painter.
After he was caught, he confessed to slaying and eating a boy named Billy Gaffney in a stew. He wrote to his attorney:
At frequent intervals, I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about two hours, it was nice and brown, cooked through. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was a sweet as a nut.
In a televised interview with Germany's RTL television channel, convicted cannibal Armin Meiwes not only described human meat as "[tasting] like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger," but he also revealed that he ate his victims in a green pepper sauce with croquettes and Brussels sprouts.
In 2002, Meiwes made an online post hoping to find a "man to slaughter," and found a victim in 42-year-old computer engineer Bernd Brandes. Meiwes said that he'd fantasized about cannibalism ever since he was a child, when he began hoping to have a younger brother who could "be inside him."
In his book Jungle Ways, William Seabrook recounts his travels to West Africa to observe a cannibalistic tribe and admits he ended up going native. Seabrook thought human tasted so good that you wouldn't know you were eating people unless someone told you:
It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. 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.
In 2012, a Japanese illustrator named Mao Sugiyama invited anyone who was interested to eat his severed genitals for the sake of art. Sugiyama is asexual and had his penis and testicles surgically removed, and after he got them back from his doctor, he decided that they would make a tasty meal for someone.
At a banquet, Sugiyama served the genitals to five people (including himself) and anyone who attended who wasn't able to gain a seat at the "lucky" table was served a meal consisting of beef and alligator. According to one of the eaters, the meat was hard and rubbery, and it bent his fork when he tried to pierce it. The testicles were hard on the outside and soft and glutinous in the middle, with a fishy or gamey taste. In Sugiyama's defense, he's an illustrator, not a chef.
