Man 'tastes' his own flesh by cooking thigh muscle removed in biopsy

A man set out to discover what human flesh tastes like by taking a biopsy of his own thigh and cooking it. Greg Foot was investigating how the taste of human flesh compares to other meat in BBC Three's Secrets of Everything.

While it is illegal to actually eat human flesh – even your own – Foot found a way to mimic the taste. Eighty per cent of all taste comes from smell. That's why when we do not like the taste of a food, we tend to put our fingers over our nostrils.

The human tissue was cooked in a small container in a lab. All of the aroma was stored inside it.

Chemical analysis of the thigh aroma allowed scientists to compare it to different types of animal meat that we frequently eat. They then managed to come up with a 'recipe' of different meats which would taste most like human flesh.

Foot then created a burger of this recipe, and tucked in to discover what his own 'flesh' tastes like. "It's good. It's really beefy... a bit lamb-y," he said. "I think that's the closest I'm ever going to get to tasting human. But I'll tell you what – it's pretty good.

"We're actually a lot more like the animals we eat than you think. Analysis of my leg revealed it's about half the same type of muscle found in chicken breast, but it also contains similar muscle fibres to those found in cuts of beef."