Hufu was a joke product marketed as tofu designed to resemble human flesh in taste and texture. The tongue-in-cheek Hufu website was in existence from May 2005 to June 2006. The creators claimed that Milla Jovovich coined the term after hearing about the product's development while on a Eurostar train from London to Paris.[1]
History
editHufu was touted as "the healthy human flesh alternative" for "cannibals who want to quit", as well as a product for anthropology students studying cannibalism.[2] According to its website, hufu is also "a great convenience food for cannibals. No more Friday night hunting raids! Stay home and enjoy the good healthy taste of hufu."
Mark Nuckols (founder and CEO of Hufu, LLC)—then a student at Tuck School of Business—claimed that the concept of Hufu occurred to him when he ate a tofurkey sandwich while reading "Good To Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture", a book on cannibalism by anthropologist Marvin Harris.[1] Nuckols is also an honors JD graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.[3]
Alongside a shopping portal for the joke product itself and merch items like T-shirts and DVDs, the website included recipes attributed to Aztec and Papua New Guinea foodways in which either Hufu or human flesh could be used.[4]
Reaction
editSamantha Bee of The Daily Show interviewed Nuckols.[5] In the interview, he said "I think that a lot of the pleasure of eating the Hufu product, is imagining you're eating human flesh. For that moment, you can join the fraternity of cannibals... If you really want to come as close as possible to the experience of cannibalism, Hufu is your best option." Nuckols was also interviewed by a variety of radio and print media, including The Harvard Crimson[6] and The Stanford Daily. Stuff You Should Know, a podcast from HowStuffWorks.com, touched on Hufu during the introduction of the "How the Donner Party Worked" episode in March 2012.
It has been argued that Hufu presented consumers with a way of circumventing both the taboo and the illegality of eating human flesh.[7] Others have commented on how Hufu's branding made it unclear whether the product was meant to be a true substitute for eating human flesh, or merely a novelty substitute for animal flesh, like other vegetarian meat-like products.[8] In response to public skepticism, Nuckols has gone on the record calling his product a "bona fide undertaking."[9]
Closure of site
editThe Hufu home page eathufu.com[10] closed as of mid-2006. According to Mark Nuckols, he closed the website simply because "the world has moved on past hufu, and the site was more expensive to run than it was worth." The web design studio that created the site maintains a case history illustrating the design concepts that were present in the site.[11]
References
edit- ^ a b Duray, Dan (12 May 2005). "Tuck student markets flesh-flavored tofu on website". thedartmouth.com. The Dartmouth. Archived from the original on 31 May 2012. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
- ^ Sinclair, Rebekah (2006). "The Sexual Politics of Meatless Meat: (in)Edible Others and the Myth of Flesh without Sacrifice". In Donaldson, Brianne; Carter, Christopher (eds.). The Future of Meat Without Animals. Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd. p. 241. Retrieved 22 June 2023 – via Google Books.
The original intent was to market the product to anthropology students who would be curious to experience cannibalism.
- ^ Hudak, Kevin C (9 May 2005). "The Dartmouth Review: Interview with a Cannibal". The Dartmouth Review. Archived from the original on 2007-07-24. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
- ^ Armelagos, Gregory J. (2008). "Devouring Ourselves". In Nichols, Deborah L.; Crown, Patricia L. (eds.). Social Violence in the Prehispanic American Southwest. The University of Arizona Press. p. 218. Retrieved 22 June 2023 – via Google Books.
Nuckol's Web site (www.eathufu.com) offers classic HuFu strips (back-ordered), T-shirts (long and short sleeves), aprons, 13 DVDs, and recipes for Serano natino [sic] and Aztec human stew.
- ^ Samantha Bee (2005). "Daily Show: Bee - Flesh in the Pan". The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. Archived from the original on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Doherty, Elizabeth M (30 November 2005). "Pushing the Culinary Barrier". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
- ^ Flail, Gregory James (9 June 2006). "IV. A. 2. Meat Analog Marketing". The Sexual Politics of Meat Substitutes (PhD thesis). Georgia State University. Retrieved 22 June 2023. p. 138:
For most people, it is easy...to see a justification, even if it is a mocking one, for a product like Hufu, because eating people is not only taboo, but illegal also.
- ^ Roth, Luanne K. (December 2010). "2. Stuffing and the Flesh that Unites: The Embodiment of Colonial Desire". Talking Turkey: Visual Media and the Unraveling of Thanksgiving (PDF) (Thesis). University of Missouri-Columbia. Retrieved 22 June 2023. p. 120:
Whether Hufu is supposed to be a substitution for animal-flesh or human-flesh remains unclear.
- ^ Boese, Alex (2006). Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. Harvest. p. 77. Retrieved 22 June 2023 – via Google Books.
When eathufu.com came online in May 2005, I publicly expressed a few doubts about it...This resulted in a flurry of marketing e-mails from Nuckols, who insisted that hufu [sic] was a "bona fide undertaking."
- ^ "Eat Hufu". Archived from the original on 2006-05-27. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
- ^ "Case Studies: Argument from Design". ardes.com. Archived from the original on 2022-12-01. Retrieved 2013-05-12.