VIDEO: BBC Journalist takes meat from his own leg to cook

One man decided to find out by getting a small chunk of flesh removed from his leg and cooking it up. And the result, he says is somewhere between pork and lamb, with a smell that ‘similar to beef and ale stew.’A gruesome video shows journalist Greg Foot having a piece of muscle taken from his calf, before processing it in a lab.

The analysis revealed the muscle contains similar fibers similar to those found in both chicken breast and some cuts of beef. Because eating human flesh – even if it’s your own – is illegal, the BBC science journalist cooked his biopsy for chemical analysis of the aromas.

Smell is a huge component of taste, and Foot says sniffing his cooked meat will give him an accurate idea of what it would be like to eat it. After initially recoiling, Foot says: ‘That actually smells quite nice. It’s really meaty… a lot richer than pork or chicken.’

A chemical analysis places his flesh as somewhere between pork and lamb. Using the aroma from his flesh sample, Foot then made a replica burger using lamb and pork.

‘It’s good, it’s like really beefy, a bit lamby,’ said Foot.

‘I think it’s the closest I’m ever going to get to tasting human, and I tell you what, it’s pretty good.’

While eating human flesh now is illegal this wasn’t always the case.A new book on medicinal cannibalism recently revealed that at the end of the 18th century British royalty swallowed parts of the human body.

The author claims that this was not a practice reserved for monarchs but was widespread among the well-to-do in Europe and in America.

Dr Richard Sugg at Durham University, said: ‘The human body has been widely used as a therapeutic agent with the most popular treatments involving flesh, bone or blood.’

‘Cannibalism was found not only in the New World, as often believed, but also in Europe.

‘One thing we are rarely taught at school yet is evidenced in literary and historic texts of the time is this: James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own corpse medicine; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine.

‘Along with Charles II, eminent users or prescribers included Francis I, Elizabeth I’s surgeon John Banister, Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, William III, and Queen Mary.’