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.
aren’t prion diseases usually just a thing for the brain? though I haven’t considered the medication aspect… I want to eat a human heart some day, any other things I’d need to consider? I guess I’ll just take the risk with the medications.
the funny thing is I’m being entirely serious. I need a heart transplant and if I survive I want to turn my old heart into burgers and share them with my girlfriend and boyfriend.
Misfolded proteins can occur everywhere it’s just more fatal if it happens in the brain.
Honestly all that toxic shit is in our food already. There’s a reason it accumulated in the “victim” too.
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.
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.
It’s a prion disease. I’m pretty sure it comes from eating the brain of someone who had it.
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)
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.
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
I’d be so down to be eaten once I die tbh
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.
Tbf, that increases the risk of prion diseases.
Yeah so has ritualistic rape of boys to instill them with manhood. Historical precedent does not infer a normative ethical framework in any direction.
but I’m vegan :(. Soooo I think I’ll have to sit this one out.
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!
That can kinda be arranged, actually. Something that came up during one of Caitlin Doughty’s videos is a nature preserve type place in Florida that they protect by burying people there to decompose naturally. I’m not going to look for more info about this on Christmas though, lol.
