Years ago, Dawning Inc. came up with a revolutionary new product: grown meat. It was quite revolutionary: the meat came from a very few cells of beef muscle placed into a rich nutrient base.
Even if many expressed disgust at a steak from a vat, the grown meat quickly became popular and widely distributed as a cheaper and more ethical alternative to killing animals. The quality was also superior as Dawning had figured out a way to simulate the muscle to the perfect consistency making every steak flawless.
Eventually, when the patent expired, copycats rose quietly until the whole process of making meat was possible with devices from a Chinese company named Zaru Meat. These Zaru Meat Growers looked like small ovens small enough to fit on a kitchen counter. It was simplicity itself: open the nutrient pack, add the small of capsule of cells and plug in the electric muscle stimulator. Wait for a few weeks for them to grow, be stimulated in a nice muscle and you got a big slab of delicious meat.
That was when things got weird.
The first known person to try it was John Waro, a self-described "experience seeker" from California. He later said that he just decided to try on a whim when he ran out of the cells capsule. Strangely, like hot dogs sausages and bread, cells capsules and nutrient packs were sold in mismatched numbers to increase sales. A later picture of him was of him proudly showing the hole in his thigh where he had taken his leg muscle before putting it in his Zaru. He described the taste of his first steak of, well, himself as "subtle, slightly sweet and utterly delicious".
That was when things got really weird.
People not only started sampling their own flesh, but also formed "clubs" to taste each other. While lawmakers were making hay of all this, it quickly became a fad for modern thinking newlyweds to "eat each other"... literally. Meat from obese people was known as particularly delicious and sought after. Specialty supermarkets started offering meat from celebrities, most of the time under false pretenses (some were later sued for false advertising). Meat buffet opened up with pictures of the original cell providers next to each plate of meat.
The fad quickly came to the end however when the scaremongers proved right for once: cases of rare sicknesses started popping up after extensive consumption of human meat.
Who would have thought that human meat was bad for you?
- The Funny History Of Food, Charles Mores, 2076
