A show featuring Masterchef star Gregg Wallace had viewers completely disgusted as he visited a food factory and tucked into some 'human meat’.
On the programme, Gregg was told about how burgers, steaks, and sausages can be made from ‘thin slices of human tissue’ to create a ‘nutrient-rich mix’ that causes the cells to grow into a ‘cake’.
The human meat was also said to have been much cheaper than any animal alternative, meaning that whole families can be fed for very little and steaks cost just 99p each.
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At this point, it should have become clear that this wasn’t actually a real documentary, and it was a piece of satire about the cost-of-living crisis and the rising prices of food and – well – just about everything else.
There's also a point to be had about eating meat, too.
We're unequivocally grossed out by the idea of human meat being created this way, but the process by which animal meat is made is no less disgusting or strange, when you actually consider it properly.
Channel 4 was poking fun at the state of society, and – to be quite honest – it’s a sad indictment of the current state of affairs that not everyone realised it was a joke.
Imagine the idea that some people think it would be normal to be sold on the idea of factory-made human flesh to be eaten, sold out of an industrial unit in Lincolnshire.
The show was called Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat and you could have been forgiven for thinking it was just another one of the 58-year-old’s shows where he visits a food factory and sees how stuff gets made.
However, on this one, they were talking about how Britain’s departure from the European Union has given the country free reign to ‘harvest people and pay them for their flesh’.
They met Gillian, a retired worker who sold her thigh for £200 because ‘it would pay for two weeks of energy bills’, as well as discussing the ‘premium steak’, consisting of well-fed children under the age of six’ that have been ‘milk-raised and well-rested’.
As a reminder, no children were actually harmed in the making of this show, it’s not real, but – again – it’s quite sad that it seems a bit like it could be.
Not everyone was so sure that it wasn’t real, anyway.
One person tweeted: “Anyone watching Channel 4 right now with Gregg Wallace & lab grown meat using human cells?
“Personally I find it gross.”
Another person wrote: “So… did anybody watch Gregg Wallace on c4 The British Miracle Meat?!
“Good Harvest [the fake factory] are making meat products from human donors, incl a premium range from milk fed children under 6/7 years old, because it’s really creamy!!!!
“What the F is the world coming to?”
Now THAT is the real question, isn’t it?
A third simply wrote: “Is this Gregg Wallace or Black Mirror?”
Not everyone was totally fooled though, as one person opined: “Must admit the Gregg Wallace British Miracle Meat mockumentary had me for the first 10-15mins.
“Shows where we are in this country that this is almost believable.”
If you dare to watch it back, it’s available on All4 now.
Topics: Channel 4, Food And Drink, UK News, Weird, Politics
Tom Wood