Jam Don’t Shake Like That

A couple of days ago, I shared with you some fun gelatin facts. None of them however even begins to compare with the one I stumbled across today.

How would you like to eat…

No I can’t even say it. This is ridiculous. Insane.

But I have to tell you. How would you like to eat… No. Yes, dammit. I must. How would you like to eat…

Human-flavoured Jell-O?

Or OK, human gelatin. Which is the animal-derived protein that Jell-O and other such desserts are based on. Just add boiling water. But human gelatin is of course human-flavoured, by definition.

But why – Why the f*&@!? – would you want to make gelatine from people?

Because it’s vegetarian, for one.

Well kinda. It’s actually made by yeast, which is vegetarian. But the yeast has been genetically engineered with human DNA to manufacture collagen, the gelatin protein. I cannot however see a lot of vegetarians accepting that this is anything but anathema.

All right, the idea behind making human collagen may really be that it has medical applications; it’s likely to be more compatible with the human body. Interesting though how I have really split feelings about that. If, say, you wanted collagen to inject into people, using human instead of animal seems more natural. Kinda.

But making that collagen into gelatin and using it for medical applications, such as soluble drug capsules, that you actually eat?

Cannibalism, plain and simple. Fetch torches and pitchforks, stet.