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Surprising Science — October 29, 2011

Could Cannibalism Solve Future Food Shortages?

There’s a very good chance that generating food from traditional farming and livestock practices will not be able to keep pace with the world’s population boom.

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What’s the Latest Development?

The United Nations predicts that global population will reach 7 billion by the end of the month and that by century’s end, it could be 10 billion. There’s a very good chance that generating food from traditional farming and livestock practices will not be able to keep pace with this population boom. Could a system by which aging members of society are selected to provide nutrition to younger generations solve food shortages of the future? Or would it be a strategy for literally eat ourselves out of existence.

What’s the Big Idea?

Ethical objections aside, the numbers do not support cannibalism as humans are much less meaty than domesticated animals like the cows and pigs we currently slaughter. “Even if we heavily supplemented our diet of human ‘long pork’ with grains, we’d have to consume more fellow humans per year than we could ever hope to replace with new babies.” Feeding a population of humans on human meat would require two-thirds of us be eliminated to feed the remaining third.

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