Fa-fa-fa-fava beans and Chianti please, I'm hungry.
Dieting cannibals: At last, a scientist has calculated calories for human body parts
Imagine this: You’re trapped on a desert island. You’ve eaten nothing for 20 days and as you grow increasingly delirious, your friend who is also stuck in this godforsaken place begins to look appetizing... which part of the body should you eat first? According to a bizarre paper published in Scientific Reports, consuming body …
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Friday 7th April 2017 11:07 GMT Korev
As mr. deadlift has pointed out above, there's only one option....
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Friday 7th April 2017 08:57 GMT VinceH
"Dr James Cole, a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at The University of Brighton in the UK,"
...and a time traveller, which may be helpful for his job. Just saying.
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Friday 7th April 2017 09:24 GMT Mr Dogshit
Obviously not written by a proper scientist
seeing as the international scientific unit of energy is the kilojoule.
Calories, if I remember correctly, were invented by an American fellow who burnt certain foodstuffs and measured the amount of heat released during that process. As even a four year old knows, burning food isn't the same as digesting it.
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Friday 7th April 2017 10:36 GMT FrogsAndChips
Re: Obviously not commented by a proper scientist
The SI unit for energy is the joule, not the kilojoule.
The kilojoule is used in the context of food energy, where the Calorie (or kilocalorie) is equally commonly used, so there's nothing wrong with its use it in this article.
As for the calorie, it has always been defined as the energy needed to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. Wikipedia tells me it was invented by a French chemist.
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Friday 7th April 2017 15:34 GMT Bandikoto
$ units grams lines
A calorie (cal) is the unit that raises 1g of water 1C, which is about 4.184 joules (per El GOOG), for those of you in countries not suffering from a hodge-podge of units systems that don't correlate with each other - the calorie being a perfect example - sounds like a SI unit, but isn't. Personally, I blame the French. This unit isn't used except in middle school science class, when the concept is demonstrated to you. A calorie smells like burnt sugar. The only people that remember this is those who didn't spend the latter part of their pre-university schooling drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
Now, food energy in silly-unit countries (as opposed to countries that use SI units) is quoted in kilocalories, and is written Calories or Cal. (4184 joules or 4.184kJ)
For what it's worth, the number of Americans who aren't aware that there are 28 grams in an ounce is vanishingly small. (Although be aware there's the "Isn't it 30 grams to the ounce?" crowd, but that's within 10% now, isn't it? At least they have a feel for the general size of the unit.)
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Friday 7th April 2017 23:13 GMT Mark 85
Re: $ units grams lines
Personally, I blame the French. This unit isn't used except in middle school science class, when the concept is demonstrated to you.
Err... it's used on every package of food sold in America. But then, everyone ignores that table of information or maybe think "higher is better" when it comes to the amount of calories.
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Friday 7th April 2017 10:26 GMT Lee D
I would posit that if it's just you and a friend on a desert island, that by the time you've killed them, you'd only get a day or two of meals out of them before the body was too rotten / infested to continue.
And in that day or two, you're not going to be able to get through a human-worth of meat. At most you'd get through a leg, I should imagine, judging by the size of a decent sirloin steak.
Cannibalism is not only inefficient, it's dangerous (humans fight back more), counter-productive to the continuation of the species in general (from killing your own to growing distrust among social groups), wasteful even if performed en-masse, and worsens as famine etc. worsen anyway - there's only a small gain from eating your diseased/starved friend, for instance, compared to having two people hunt food.
There are many reasons that it's rare. But biggest of them is that it's a bit pointless.
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Friday 7th April 2017 13:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
that by the time you've killed them, you'd only get a day or two of meals out of them before the body was too rotten / infested to continue.
Ever heard of smoking? Use lots of green wood and do a nice[1] cold-smoke.
Or salting - after all, the ocean is really, really close.
Or just plain cooking - that'll mean the meat lasts a bit longer.
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Friday 7th April 2017 13:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
"you'd only get a day or two of meals out of them before the body was too rotten / infested to continue."
1) Trick your mate so there's no fight, and immobilise him
2) Amputate a lower limb - cauterise and apply a makeshift tourniquet to prevent the resource spoiling
3) Eat limb before it goes off - cooked or raw according to preference
4) Keep former mate supplied with water - in circumstances sea water is adequate
5) GoTo 3 (adapting as necessary)
Obviously this isn't going to be a great "customer journey" for your mate, but surely better than both of you starving?
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Sunday 9th April 2017 12:15 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Re: NTNON plane crash. "It was our only chance"
Since we're doing acronyms today, MPFC had the topic pretty much covered as well.
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Saturday 8th April 2017 13:41 GMT Unicornpiss
For accuracy..
Wouldn't you have to take a corpse and burn it by increments in a bomb calorimeter, which is the standard test for assessing calories in a food?
It also looks like zombies are pretty stupid. Craving brains all the time while they should be saying "Thighs! Thighs!" for maximum nutrition.