The cannibal’s alternative

Braaaaains. Braaaaaaaaaaaaains.

Even though Halloween is officially over, our slightly bizarre obsession with the paranormal is not. The popularity of shows such as “The Vampire Diaries” and “True Blood” are proof of this.

We really like our horror films, and more recently, our zombies. We crave them like they crave our flesh and brains. This is really bizarre, considering we essentially have a love-hate relationship with them.

I don’t think any of us want to think about having our brains eaten by a diseased creature that should be dead. We see it as cannibalism, even though it’s not what we typically think of as cannibalism.

For example, most of us associate eating humans with the film “The Silence of the Lambs,” where Hannibal Lecter eats his victims.

That being said, cannibalism was seen as an acceptable practice among other cultures years ago. Due to Christian influences, this practice has died down, though our fascination remains.

In my bizarre foods course, we study a wide variety of foods offered around the world, including the practice of cannibalism. What I wasn’t expecting to learn in that lecture was that apparently a few years ago, someone had created HuFu — the human flesh
alternative.

Okay, it was really a joke. But someone thought it would be funny to create a human-flavored tofu for “cannibals who want to quit.”

It raises the question, would you really be willing to try such a product?

Surely the question has been raised of what humans would taste like, given our media obsession with horror film bad guys such as Hannibal. And think of the Donner Party, having no choice but to resort to cannibalism in order to survive the winter.

Frankly, I’d be curious to see how one would find out the taste of human flesh and synthesize it. But then again, I really don’t want to know. I guess ignorance is bliss.
Then there’s the matter of the “Human Bakery” located in the countryside of Thailand.

An art student, raised in a family of bakers, has been baking since his childhood but decided to go off to art school. He had to return home to run the family bakery and decided to combine his art with his work. The result — loaves of bread shaped to look like severed human heads, limbs, feet, faces — anything human.

I’m not going to lie, when the pictures came up on the slide for class, I thought there had been some new discovery of a homicidal sicko who took severed heads, washed off most of the blood, wrapped them up in saran wrap and put a price tag on them.

Once you get past the initial shock and queasiness, the food really is amazing. The baker hand paints all of his bread to make it look authentic. I’m not sure how he sculpts the body pieces, but they look to be, well, severed heads and limbs.

When I Googled images of the bakery, a picture of a young boy eating a face came up. He seemed rather content with his face slice.

It makes me shudder to think of a HuFu sandwich, with bread from the human bakery.
But then again, the man who created the HuFu joke mentioned it being an experiment for anthropology students curious about cannibalism. After all, anthropology is the study of humanity, and one of its focuses is culture.

Since cannibalism played a large role in many cultures throughout the world years ago, we have to respect it. Not all cannibalistic societies were barbaric, after all. The Wari’ tribe from the Amazon practiced cannibalism as a way of respecting their dead.
Besides, we eat some pretty weird food items. Do you ever think about all the chemicals that go into our junk foods?

So when you watch your fun horror films involving the digestion of humans, with brains or flesh or whatever else, keep in mind that not all cannibals are mindless zombies or homicidal crazy people.

Some of them are just carrying on with tradition.

And who knows, maybe that’s actually bread or tofu they’re eating.   

 E-mail: lm35@indiana.edu