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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Human bodies don't contain enough calories [sciencemag.org] to be worth eating as a regular meal, according to a study:

A new, slightly morbid study based on the calorie counts of average humans suggests that human-eating was mostly ritualistic, not dietary, in nature among hominins including Homo erectus, H. antecessor, Neandertals, and early modern humans.

Four adult male bodies that were chemically analyzed in two studies in 1945 and 1956 were found to have an average of 125,822 calories of fat and protein. Extinct hominins [australianmuseum.net.au] may have had more muscle mass and calories than today's humans, but far less than other animals such as woolly mammoths [wikipedia.org] (3.6 million calories), woolly rhinoceroses [wikipedia.org] (1.26 million calories), and aurochs [wikipedia.org] (979,200 calories). Other hominins could represent just as much of a threat at would-be hunters.

Assessing the calorific significance of episodes of human cannibalism in the Palaeolithic [nature.com] (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep44707) (DX [doi.org])

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