Interview with a Cannibal

By Kevin C. Hudak | Monday, May 9, 2005

Dartmouth Review President Kevin Hudak ‘07 sat down to lunch recently with Mark Nuckols Tu ‘06, who claims to be the founder and CEO of Hufu, Inc., a new company that will market tofu designed to look and taste like human flesh. Needless to say, Nuckols ordered his hamburger raw without any cheese or other toppings, because he “likes his meat simple.” He says Hufu will be available for purchase online at www.eathufu.com. A tasting will be open to the public on May 11th in front of Buchanan Hall at the Tuck School.

The Dartmouth Review: What are your dynamics that contributed towards a position to create a company that would sell the Hufu, the human flesh-flavored tofu? Is this a Tuck project, or more of a personal endeavor?

Mark Nuckols: Well, it’s a personal project. I have assembled a creative team that includes Ray Drainville from Arguments from Design, who is a graphic artist from Sheffield, England. We also have Ben Jones, who is our web site director up in Toronto. There are a few other people I’m working with in terms of editorial content. We’ve got a Dutch company that is actually making the product. I’ve written most of the content for the web site. So, it really is sort of a multi-national effort to date. The genesis of this whole seemingly crazy project was a couple years ago when I was reading a book by the anthropologist Marvin Harris titled, Good to Eat: Fields of Food Taboos, which deals with food taboos, and I was reading the chapter on cannibalism while eating a tofurkey sandwich. Then I thought, “If you can make tofu that tastes like turkey, why not human flesh?” I thought it was just kind of an amusing idea, but what I found was that I would tell this story at parties and people seemed to be either appalled, mortified, or they found it to be hilarious. So, I would find for example, in Washington, I would go to a party with a bunch of corporate lawyers, who generally are the dullest people in the world, but I would tell them this story. These people were not friends of mine, just acquaintances, but I would see them a year later and they would say, “Oh, what’s going on with that Hufu project?” And I thought, “Man, if people remember something like that a year later, it seems to have some power to it.” So I thought a couple months ago, “Why not try to pull together all the elements of an actual commercial project.” The more I got into it the more expensive it has become, because we started out with just some very simple artwork and we are now trying to make the artwork quite artful and iconic, hopefully.

TDR: But is this a Tuck project for one of your classes, or a personal project?

MN: No, not a Tuck project. I’m actually working on a project for a salmon company that fishes and markets salmon as my Tuck commercial project. There are a few synergies between marketing Hufu and salmon.

TDR: One would think it would be tough to market a food that is designed to taste like human flesh. Also, why choose tofu as the medium instead of something like potato chips? You know, human flesh-flavored potato chips or beef jerky, or something like that. How do you actually plan to market Hufu?

MN: Well, to be honest, I think it’s a product that sells itself. I have found that if people aren’t repulsed by the idea, generally people who are intrigued with the concept are going to buy it. If nothing else, they’ll just try it. I’m looking at a couple of different markets. One is cannibals who want to quit or want more convenient food. No more Friday night hunting raids. Well, actually it was originally thought of as a project for anthropology students, so that if you were studying a practice like cannibalism you might get curious and you might want to actually try some of the “forbidden flesh,” as it were. But to be honest, talking to a wider range of people, I have found there really is a market out there for this product.

TDR: Where would it be sold? Could you buy it at 7-11?

MN: Probably not at 7-11. I think they have got a limit on the SKU’s that they can stock. It is very hard to get shelf space, actually. Against Kraft, it’s going to be very hard for a small firm like ours. So we’re pretty much going to sell Hufu exclusively on-line. Speaking of the on-line store, we are going to have an offering of a clothing line. A limited one, but with shirts and chef’s aprons with our logo designs which we think people will find appealing. We are also going to be selling a very select number of DVDs and books on the theme of cannibalism.

TDR: Now, how did you come up with the recipe for human flesh flavor? And how will you actually inject the flavor into the tofu? What is the process there?

MN: The Hufu is produced by a meat-substitute processor/producer in the Netherlands, and they pretty much just designed the product to our specifications. I can tell you based on the research that we’ve done that human flesh essentially tastes like beef, but a little softer and a little bit leaner. The stories that people in Samoa or Fiji called human beings “long pork,” I think that is overdone. People do not taste like pork or chicken.

TDR: What has been the public’s reaction so far?

MN: Well, I think that it depends who you are speaking to in a lot of instances. I have found that with people from Scandinavia or countries like Australia, or the UK, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. I have found that maybe the American audience is going to be a little bit tougher to market to than some of the other markets we are targeting.

TDR: Initially I thought this was some parody of American consumerism. We’re eating all this red meat, so why not eat ourselves? But it sounds like you are serious about this.

MN: As serious as a heart-attack. If you are not convinced, ask somebody about this artwork here. I’ll tell you, this is expensive stuff. I mean a lot of time and money has gone into this.

TDR: Does your company find cannibalism itself to be immoral and disgusting, or are you trying to change that image of cannibalism?

MN: I think that it is morally neutral, personally. I mean, it is prohibited for the same kinds of reasons that we proscribe things like killing or stealing. Dartmouth College could be a very treacherous place were cannibalism permitted. Going to class could be a real problem.

TDR: What are the other possibilities for Hufu? Will you ever introduce variants of dog flesh, cat flesh, or gorilla flesh?

MN: We are looking at chimp and ape flavors.

TDR: What would that taste like?

MN: We are still doing research on that, but this is an area, where, for example in Hong Kong, there is a demand for exotic foods of endangered species. So perhaps, by making a meat substitute for chimpanzee, we actually would reduce the actual demand for so-called “game meat”. I think we can all agree that we do not want to see any more chimpanzees actually eaten. We have also thought about a project called Soylent Hufu.

TDR: Soylent Hufu?

MN: Did you see the movie, Soylent Green? Well, Charleston Heston in that movie screams, “It’s people!” Well, Soylent Hufu, our slogan would be, “It’s not people!”

TDR: That’s good.

MN: There are a lot of potential product extensions to the basic Hufu product. The first introduction is going to be the classic strips. These will basically resemble strips from either the thighs, or upper arms, or buttocks. Those are usually the first strips that you eat.

TDR: Those are usually the first?

MN: Yes—we are actually also planning the Hufu Heart. That is actually one of the real delicacies, the human heart. And also the liver, but, of course, everyone knows that famous scene with Hannibal Lecter. Doctor Lecter’s Liver, I think, will be our third product introduction.

Interview with a Cannibal

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