Why a cannibal diet would be a serious nutritional error?
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Beyond legal and moral standards, eating human flesh would not even be beneficial for people
From the point of view of science, substituting meats of animal origin for human flesh would be a mistake for the nutrition and health of people, so although cannibalism is an idea that generates disgust for many, it would also be unsustainable.
Leer en español: ¿Por qué una dieta caníbal sería un grave error nutricional?
Low calories
The calories provided by human flesh is quite small compared to animal meat, since according to Gizmodo, the human muscle has approximately 1300 calories per kilogram, while the chicken contributes up to 2390 calories per kilogram, so a diet cannibal would not provide the necessary energy or at least it would be needed to consume meat in large quantities.
According to a study of the calorific importance of the human body made by the archaeologist James Cole and published in the journal Nature, the amount of each part of the body is found, for example, an average heart of 0.44 grams has 650 calories, a whole leg of 10.27 kg contributes 13354 calories, adipose tissue is the most caloric of all, with 49938 calories per 8.72 kg. In total, the research suggests that the average human body would contribute 12,522 calories.
Also read: Do you feel as if you need to start eating healthy?
Risk of infection
Although it may seem beneficial to take a low-calorie diet, cannibalism has another problem even more severe: the transmission of viruses. It turns out that human flesh is usually infected with highly contagious viruses and bacteria, such as E. coli, hepatitis, and many others, which in case it is not well cooked, would transmit some disease to its consumer, according to Gizmodo.
And even if cooked correctly, there is also the risk of having prions, a poorly formed protein that infects other proteins by modifying and damaging them, prions are highly contagious and are eliminated by heat or the immune system, can cause death through the degeneration of the brain, according to Vix.
Also read: Does the consumption of red meat increase the risk of breast cancer?
In fact, in the mid-twentieth century, the Fore tribe of Papua Nueva Guínea, had the habit of consuming some organs of the recently deceased, including the brain, but each year up to 200 members died out of a total of 11 thousand, investigations revealed that it was because many were infected with prions, which caused a brain death that members associated with the "magic", according to The Objective
Now, moving away from the nutritional and health issue of cannibalism, this diet is not entirely illegal, for example, the United States and the United Kingdom have rules that prohibit cannibalism. However, illegality would be in the form of human flesh. , so the only option could be the'autocannibalism,' Gizmodo reviews.
Perhaps the best-known case of cannibalism has been the "Miracle of the Andes", in 1972, when a 45-passenger plane fell in the Andes, 12 died instantly and another 17 in the following days, due to the temperatures reached -30 ℃, after spending more than a week and remaining without any food, the survivors made the decision to eat the bodies of the deceased -breasted and sometimes cooked- in order to stay alive while searching rescue, a fact that lasted 72 days, according to the newspaper RT.
LatinAmerican Post | Juan Bacallado
Translated from "¿Por qué una dieta caníbal sería un grave error nutricional?"
