Apparently, the drawback to being a cannibal is that you can get a much better caloric return by hunting big, slow and somewhat stupid large herbivores than by trying to catch and eat wily humans. At least, that is what I discovered when I read a summary on Ars Technica about a recent scientific report (Cole, 2017) from nature. Prompted by finds of human bones with signs that suggested other humans nibbled on them but not content with the theory that sometimes our ancestors just got a bit hungry, Cole investigated in detail, even calculating how many calories you’d get from eating someone (muscle mass only or head to toe dining).

It does sound a rather disturbing line of research although, thinking about it, not as much as the fact that others may previously have suggested that “episodes of Palaeolithic cannibalism” were “‘nutritional’ in nature”! I think I’ll file this one under ‘Misc’ rather than ‘Food’.