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Actually, they claim to be selling the stuff. See this page:

http://www.eathufu.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=EH&Category_Code=FD_HUFU

They may well be planning to sell "textured, flavored tofu".

Here's what I meant when I said "I hope this is a hoax." What I meant is, "I hope they're not planning to try to find out how to make tofu taste like human flesh, and then sell human-flavored tofu." Because I can't imagine truly doing that correctly without cannibalism being involved.

And even if they do it without cannibalism being involved, the resulting product still merits a place on my "products that really shouldn't exist" list. :-)

Don't worry, I didn't even know who larpwriting was until I checked just now. :-)

Overall, though, I'm inclined to agree with you. Too much of the site seems to have been written with tongue wedged in cheek for this to be a serious effort to, uh, produce a human flesh food substitute. Consider the following, also from the FAQ for ease of reference:

" How do you know HufuTM tastes like human flesh?
The taste and texture of HufuTM are the result of painstaking research and extensive testing in our kitchens. We are supremely confident that our food products would satisfy the tastes of even the most demanding cannibal."

Yeah, right.

I think I explained what I meant by "hope this is a hoax" in a response to another comment.

If you're right, i.e., if the guys behind this website are just interested in selling T-shirts and yanking people's chains, then by my definition it's a hoax. For example, the Minneapolis in 1973 Worldcon bid has continued for years, so it's not really a Worldcon bid anymore, but the buttons, T-shirts and room parties that have resulted since 1973 are real enough.

This site did (most emphatically) not make me queasy, not in the slightest. I found it incredibly entertaining and I am glad you shared it.

Thanks. Frankly, I posted it almost entirely because I was sure it would be excellent conversation/comment fodder...and I was right. :-)

My original reference to queasiness was not meant to suggest that I found the Hufu site physically nauseating; it actually takes quite a strong visual or physical stimulus to nauseate me. However, I felt a kind of ethical queasiness about the possibility that someone had done the taste-testing required to be able to determine if flavored tofu really had the taste of human flesh. I wouldn't want to eat my cat, even though she's not human and arguably is not even sentient. I would be even more reluctant to eat the flesh of a human, particularly one I had known well.

I note your comment about the apparent waste of good meat via embalming and burial, etc. But is it really a waste? Consider the circumstances under which many people die, nowadays; wasted by cancer, or the radiation and chemicals we use to treat it, for example. Would you really want to eat such meat? Your comment suggests that you would not. Also, if a corpse isn't immediately refrigerated after death, it becomes a haven for microorganisms that would make it unsafe to eat, all moral issues aside, and many times people are not discovered until hours after death even if their death is natural. So in order to avoid wasting corspes, so to speak, we would have to take advance measures, and those would be pretty repugnant in and of themselves, in my opinion. Do you want your friendly neighborhood grocer or mortician or whatever standing by your deathbed with a refrigeration unit so that your family's funeral feast will remain wholesome? I don't. Respectful cremation or even burial of our dead strikes me as more wholesome than the prospect of treating the moribund but still living members of our society as a yet another potential food source.

As for the moral issues, I have no theoretical problem with cannibalism--but only if the deceased agreed to that use of his/her remains in advance (as did Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land). Unfortunately, by allowing cannibalism with consent in theory I fear we would create in practice a society where everyone has at least one potential motive for murder. (The motive grows stronger if Hannibal Lector turns out to have been right and human flesh is unusually tasty to humans.) A society that permits cannibalism by consent would in effect have also made it acceptable to hamper investigation of any suspicious deaths by eating the evidence, and claiming that you had the deceased's leave to do so.

No, I think it is best that cannibalism remain taboo. There may be circumstances where it is appropriate to forgive someone who has engaged in it out of desperation, but it is foolhardy to make it permissible on a broad scale--even if the conditions under which it is permissible are limited by customs, rules, regulations, whatever.

By the way, Eric sends smooches.