Saturday 20 October 2007

Non-cannibalistic consumption of human-derived substances

The cheapest source of material from which food grade L-cysteine may be purified in high yield is human hair. Its use in food products is widespread worldwide.

Few people identify the compulsion to gnaw and bite nails or pieces of skin from fingers as cannibalism, because it is not the intentional harvest of a food item. Similarly, intentionally consuming one's own flesh or body parts, such as sucking blood from wounds, is generally not seen to be cannibalism; ingesting one's own blood from an unintentional lesion such as a nose-bleed or an ulcer is clearly not intentional harvesting and consequently not cannibalistic. The consumption of human bodily fluids, such as semen or vaginal secretions, is also not generally considered cannibalism.

Likewise it has to be questioned whether the practice of some indigenous people from the Americas to consume the bone ashes of their deceased relatives can be considered cannibalistic.

It is possible for some mothers to gain possession of their afterbirth or placenta once their child is born. Some people eat this placenta material as a delicacy. See placentophagy.

There are many accounts of drinking urine and coprophagia. These may be toward fetishistic, allegedly homeopathic, or survival-based ends. Aboard space flights and the International Space Station, urine is regularly filtered for drinking water.

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