To serve man
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by Vince Darcangelo (buzz@boulderweekly.com)
I don't recall anyone mentioning that the University of Colorado's cafeteria, the Alferd Packer Grill, was named after a cannibal when I took the CU campus tour in the summer of '97. I would learn this information on the third day of my first semester at the school, reading a historical plaque on the UMC wall while scarfing down sesame chicken and lo mein noodles. Prior to that, I'd figured Alferd Packer to be a former university president or football star or something—not Colorado's most notorious connoisseur of human cadavers.
This information would have been a selling point for me on the tour. I appreciate a school with enough sense of humor to embrace this area's legacy of cannibalism. Not many public institutions have that same taste for the irreverent. Then again, this is the university that gave birth to South Park and its co-creator Trey Parker's cult classic, Cannibal: The Musical, which details the wacky culinary exploits of Mr. Packer and his embattled prospecting party (not to mention South Park's numerous forays into cannibalism; who can forget the notorious Fort Collins Pube Fest episode?).
But the fascination with the consumption of human flesh stretches beyond a university cafeteria in Colorado. Cannibalism is known as the "final taboo," and it's one that we as a culture love to dig on like that sexy yet unavailable co-worker who we just know would wreck our lives but with whom we still get drunk and make lewd, idiotic jokes. We can't help ourselves. Likewise, society is always flirting with the consumption of human flesh: true-crime novels, The Silence of the Lambs film series, zombie flicks, survival epics, even sit-coms. Pop culture loves a good cannibal.
Now, thanks to Mark Nuckols, cannibalism has finally made it to the American dinner table. Nuckols is the creator of Hufu, which is tofu textured and flavored to resemble human flesh (or as the Hufu website calls it, the "healthy human flesh alternative"). Earlier this month, his company debuted its flagship product, Hufu Classic Strips. Nuckols says the idea for human-flavored tofu came to him while reading a book about cannibalism, Good to Eat by anthropologist Marvin Harris.
"I've always had an interest in cultural anthropology," says Nuckols. "In terms of the culture, the interest runs a little deeper than people realize. It's not just the Hannibal Lechter movies, although for a lot of people the most interesting scenes are when Dr. Lechter serves up the liver to the unsuspecting guests at his dinner party and when he's slicing off Ray Liotta's brains for his gourmet dinner.
"It really is something that seems to resonate because it is a taboo," he continues. "It's a theme that people consider sort of shocking, but at the same time they find fascinating. We're kind of trying to tap into that."
Nuckols says he ran the Hufu idea past his co-workers (at the time he was living in London), and the idea elicited such strong reactions—both positive and negative—that he knew he was onto something. In the free market, the response has been overwhelmingly positive thus far. Within a week of making Hufu Classic Strips available for purchase, Nuckols had sold out of his product, and the strips are currently on backorder.
"This is kind of uncharted territory. You can't really project sales of human flesh substitute," says Nuckols. "But so far we've gotten a pretty strong reaction. I'm hoping that by mid-summer Hufu is going to be a household word."
But Nuckols admits he is going after a specialized market.
"We're definitely thinking that the Goth crowd, high-school students, people who are into zombie movies, those are all people who are going to be natural markets for us," he says. "But let's say your neighbor had a dinner party last weekend where they had Beluga caviar and you want to one-up them. You've got the human flesh hors d'oeuvres."
For would-be cannibals interested in trying Hufu but unsure how to prepare it, Nuckols provides recipes on the company's website (www.eathufu.com), including Aztec Human Stew, Papoua New Guinnea Hufu Dumplings, Leningrad Pirogies with Hufu and fan favorite Lechter's Liver with Fava Beans.
Ironically, Nuckols says his product has received a lot of interest from the vegan community. Nuckols was a vegetarian himself for six months some years ago, but fell off the wagon with a prime-rib dinner at a business lunch and never looked back. And while he enjoys the taste of animals, would he ever partake of a little forbidden flesh?
"It's perhaps not everybody's cup of tea, but I always thought that the sexual orgy and human-flesh feast sounded kind of interesting," says Nuckols. "Have I had human flesh? The answer is no. People ask, 'Would you try it?' You know, if I were at a cannibal feast, I don't think I'd turn down a chance to sample the main course. If nothing else, it would be a unique experience you could tell your grandkids about."
Sure, if you like to give small children nightmares. But as it happens, I agree with Nuckols and look forward to trying Hufu when production makes it possible. In the meantime, I'll just sit back and enjoy one of the cleverest marketing campaigns in recent memory.
"It's my own belief that people are tired of the slickness of marketing and advertising for most products," says Nuckols. "You look at ads for SUVs or clothing or shampoo, and they're all trying to show beautiful people doing beautiful things. We're using cannibals as our marketing pitch—bloodthirsty cannibals."
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