I don’t usually put warnings about graphic images in my blogs; I figure if you are reading a blog called “thecannibalguy.com” that you are probably not expecting unicorns and fairies. But this short clip has its own trigger warning, so I’ll just reproduce it here.

Vegans are often told by caring or sanctimonious friends and relatives that they need animal protein or they will get sick and die. This can be a bit wearisome, particularly for long-term vegans. Now here’s a novel solution.

Jamie Lee Curtis Taete (I wonder who his parents’ favourite film star was?) has been vegan or vegetarian for almost 20 years (and clearly has not died yet). After years of carnivorous peer-pressure, he’s decided to consume animal products from what he calls the only truly ethical source: himself.

Jamie seeks advice from “Blood for Food” activist, Laura Schälchli, about her recipes, which are made with blood from other animals. He follows her recipe for blood meringues, substituting his own blood for whatever unfortunate animal is usually slaughtered and bled.

And eats the results.

He starts by whisking the blood, because blood tends to clot, which even he describes as “disgusting”. But,

“I find the thought of it less gross than if I were eating the blood of an animal.”

Jamie is perhaps using shorthand, or forgetting that we are all animals?

The protein albumin comprises about fifty percent of human blood plasma, and is similar to egg whites, so the obvious choice for Jamie was to make a meringue, which is usually made from the whites of chicken eggs or, far less often, in the recipe he has chosen, the blood of goats or cows.

“I was expecting a sugary bowl of gore, but this looks like it could be real food.”

So look, autocannibalism is not an appetising prospect, but most vegans would say the same about dishes made from the organs, muscles or blood of an animal who was unwillingly slaughtered for the purpose.

 “I think I probably enjoyed this more than if I had made it using animal blood, because there was no death involved. I am really the only ethical source of animal products, because I can give my consent to myself in a way that a sheep can’t.”

Here are some of the comments from YouTube:

Some suggested that Jamie would end up a cannibal, a common thread through the literature – if you eat human flesh (or blood I guess), you will become addicted, because we are somehow irresistible. It is absolute nonsense of course. Others felt like it had made the point: eating any animal product, including from the ape known as Homo sapiens, is a bit disgusting. I have seen people flinch as they pull a piece of meat out of the fridge and pour out the blood that pools under it.

As Jamie says, if you must eat animal protein, use the nearest animal, and the only one that is able to consent, although the occasional cannibal like Armin Meiwes manages to find a willing third party to sate his cannibalistic desires. Remember the scene from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, when the “dish of the day” offers them his shoulder to eat, braised in a little white wine sauce, saying “naturally mine, sir, nobody else’s in mine to offer!”

Jamie is not unique in this – remember Gwen van der Zwan, who made blood sausages out of her own blood, commenting, “Why is my idea considered disgusting, but doing the same thing with pigs’ blood isn’t?”

Jamie has the final summation, commenting perhaps on the flesh and blood of himself, and every other sentient being:

“It’s like eating a little baked nightmare.”