• _cnt0@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    115
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Prion diseases. Accumulation of different substances, like mercury, lead, strontium-90, and, a new contender to the list: micro plastics. And you’ll want to have a look at a person’s medication and likely want to make sure they’ve been off of it for a few days before consuming their flesh.

      • watson@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yeah. Terrifying. Prion diseases are one of those things that I wish I had never learned about.

    • amzd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      51
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      Farm animals are legally allowed to eat actual plastic, not only microplastics. If you’re afraid of microplastics or accumulation of substances maybe don’t eat meat.

      Legal limit of plastic in animal feed is 0.15% in the EU

      A cow eats 25kg of dry food a day

      25/100*0.15 = 0.0375kg = 37.5grams
      

      A plastic bag weighs 6-8grams.

      You are legally allowed to feed your cow 5 plastic bags a day (as a snack)

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        7 months ago

        Bioaccumulation concentrates more pollutants the higher up the food chain you go. It is part of why most meat we eat comes from vegetarian animals. The fish we eat are often predatory so common advice is the keep the smaller and younger ones that are still big enough to be worth filleting. You don’t actually want to eat a trophy sized fish because they’ve accumulated more pollutants. Trophy sized fish are better off being realsed, they are often good breeders and help keep healthy population numbers.

        • F04118F@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          7 months ago

          Of course, something that eats cows that eat a shitton of plastic, will have even more plastic in it.

          But that doesn’t mean that it’s healthy to eat an animal that has been fed (assuming they are slaughtered at 3 years, and ignoring the climate impact, the ethics of slaughtering an animal in its youth, etc)…

          41 kg of plastic

          • amzd@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            I think if you don’t count the culling of baby calves the average age is ~6years so like 82kg of plastic.

            • F04118F@feddit.nl
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              7 months ago

              Thanks for your feedback, I was guesstimating off the top of my head. On doing some research, I see meat cows are usually slaughtered at 18 months - 2 years old in the Netherlands.

              5-6 years is the number I see for dairy cows.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      7 months ago

      OK, mate, I have good news and bad news. The good news: we’re having a feast and you’re the guest of honour. The bad news: you need to stop taking your meds for a few days.

    • weeeeum@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      Honestly all that toxic shit is in our food already. There’s a reason it accumulated in the “victim” too.

      • _cnt0@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        39
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        The problem is bioaccumulation: taking in substances faster than you can metabolize and excrete them. Eating something that has already accumulated something is worse than accumulating it from the same original sources. That’s why you can do suicide by vitamin A poisoning by eating carnivore livers.

        • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          It’s also the case that when you’re eating plant-based foods, unlike meat and dairy products, you’re eating alpha- and beta-carotene and beta-cryptoxanthin, which your body can convert to Vitamin A and which don’t cause hypervitaminosis.

          So if you’re just learning “Oh, shit, Vitamin A can poison me”, don’t let that hold you back from squash, yams, carrots etc.

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      7 months ago

      Dead bodies make for poor meat the longer it rests. Which is why people don’t really eat roadkill. Unless they are looking for brain worms like RFK.

      • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        I know several people who will take roadkill if they can confirm the freshness by either witnessing the accident or knowing that the kill recently appeared. I myself almost took a deer once. It was a cold night and the deer wasn’t on the corner at midnight. But it was there at 6am while still cold outside. If I had the time and space id have likely brought it home to at least assess the meat.

  • Liam Mayfair@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    idk man I think the mental gymnastics go the other way around here. You have to make a shit load of assumptions to consume human flesh safely and ethically:

    • the person being eaten consents to their body being eaten
    • the person has no family or each and every one of their relatives consents and is totally ok with their loved one’s body ending up in a casserole
    • the person has no diseases that can be transmitted by consuming some or all parts of their body: prion disease (brain), AIDS, hepatitis and loads other blood-transmitted illnesses, to name a few obvious ones
    • there are no drugs or medications in the person’s body that could be absorbed into your system (regurgitated meth, yummy!)
    • you have the means to effectively and safely process or cook the body yourself or we set up an entire new industry around mass human body consumption which sounds like the plot of a Stephen King novel tbh

    As some have pointed out here, if eating human meat is your only available choice in an extreme life-or-death survival situation, it would have to do, but unless you also have the means to carve up and cook the body, you’re actually going to consume more energy digesting the raw flesh than what you’re getting in return. Humans make for rather poor food overall, that’s a fact. I would back this up with some evidence but I don’t feel like being put on a list for looking up the nutritional contents of human bodies lol

    • Alice@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      7 months ago

      I don’t care for cannibalism but the second bullet doesn’t sit right with me. I always wanted to be composted. My family will hate that, but I don’t think it’s their choice.

      • Liam Mayfair@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 months ago

        Sure, that makes sense, but not everybody leaves a will behind or lets anybody know about their wishes when they die, out of ignorance, sudden death, there are a lot of reasons why you may die and haven’t told anyone what to do. Happens a lot with organ donors, for example.

        In lieu of the deceased’s will, the relatives need to make a decision. And, IMHO, this whole cannibalism thing is a lot harder to wrap your head around than having your loved one’s organs harvested to save somebody else’s life, for example.

    • Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      the person has no family or each and every one of their relatives consents and is totally ok with their loved one’s body ending up in a casserole

      Assuming your first condition is already met then nah, a person’s own wishes as regards their own body ought to supersede those of anyone else

  • Hegar@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    7 months ago

    Endocannibalism - eating people from your own group -has been practised as a respectful part of funerial traditions by a handful of cultures across the world and may have been more widespread in prehistory.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    If I’m dead, I absolutely would have no quarrels with people eating my body. Nothing to complain about since I hold no beliefs that when I die, my body needs to be intact for me to go to a heaven like place.

    Also, who cares what any family members would think. It’s my body, not theirs. If I don’t mind people nibbling on my corpse, then I’d hope any family that cares about me is able to respect that wish.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      7 months ago

      To be fair, if you’re dead you’ll have no quarrels with anything. I understand what you mean though. You have no quarrels now if someone eats you when you die.

  • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    7 months ago

    My main gripe is that humans don’t have much meat on them. It works in a pinch, but the effort needed to eat so far outside of our normal pallette isn’t worth it.

    That said, I would be in favor of letting nature decompose our bodies more. I hate having to waste so much effort on disposing of bodies, especially once I die. I want my body to get torn apart by animals, not buried with holy rites. Mummification is the only burial practice that seems kinda cool. Cremation seems unnecessary, especially if I can get eaten by something instead. Just take what’s useful, chop me up a bit, and throw me in the compost!

  • SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    7 months ago

    ey gonna be honest, i wouldn’t want to eat human flesh, even when im starving.

    however if my dead body can save someone’s live then they gotta do what they gotta do. it’s not like i need it anymore

  • Alice@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    I remember seeing someone get a callout post on Twitter for saying they don’t see an ethical problem with cannibalism if it’s consensual. That’s all they said, and they got dogpiled so hard that they apologized and went to therapy for their “unnatural thoughts”, and the callouts continued.

    Unless several Twitter users plan to give them unrestricted access to their corpse soon, I don’t see why that’s callout-worthy.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      7 months ago

      I don’t just not see an ethical problem with it if it’s consensual. I’d argue it’s the most ethical way to eat meat in that case. We do horrible things to animals without their consent. If someone consents to being eaten, that must be more ethical.

      You can argue it’s disgusting or something, but if you’re arguing with ethics as the basis, consensual cannibalism has to be better than eating other animal meat.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      7 months ago

      Did they actually go to therapy or did they just say that to try and save face? (Not that I believe they deserved that level of push back necessarily.)

      • Alice@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        7 months ago

        That’s a good question. I kinda hope they didn’t, because that’s a stupid amount of money to spend to punish yourself for an unorthodox opinion.

  • MrMobius @sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    Prions are a big problem for cannibalism since they resist high temperature. So they’re still deadly even if the “meat” is well cooked. That said, Bones And All was a great film about cannibalism. And it was romantic, in a fucked-up way.

  • Dupree878@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Avoid the nervous system, internal organs that aren’t heart, lungs or liver, lymphatic and glandular systems and you eliminate prion disease worries

  • Thurstylark@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    7 months ago

    Heh, my partner and I have already had the, “I don’t seek it out, but if we’re life-and-death stranded and you go first, sorry, you’re provisions now” conversation.

  • pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    If anyone wants to kill and eat me, go right ahead

    It’ll be nicer than dying alone and having my body rot in my apartment till someone eventually checks on me