<![CDATA[Latest posts for the thread "Can you eat Orks?"]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/31.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11819996.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11819996.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Orks aren’t fungi either. They’re meat and bone, but have symbiotic fungi as part of their biology.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11819998.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11819998.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Vultures have ridiculous stomach acid which allows them to eat flesh that would kill a person stone dead. So that Species A can eat Species B does not make Species B edible.

Orks aren’t fungi either. They’re meat and bone, but have symbiotic fungi as part of their biology.


If they are meat and bone it should make eating Orks easier.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820000.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820000.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
I figure it's no different to the question "can you eat Eldar?".]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820002.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820002.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Predatory Species don’t taste terribly nice. And they can be filled with all sorts of nasties from their own diet.

What’s poisonous to a human may not be poisonous to an Ork. And whatever the active ingredient is? Will accumulate in their body, in turn making them hazardous to eat.

Just stick to enjoying your Corpse Starch and Soylent Viridians.

For the People. By the People. From the People.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820013.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820013.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Trouble is they are what they eat.

Predatory Species don’t taste terribly nice. And they can be filled with all sorts of nasties from their own diet.

What’s poisonous to a human may not be poisonous to an Ork. And whatever the active ingredient is? Will accumulate in their body, in turn making them hazardous to eat.

Just stick to enjoying your Corpse Starch and Soylent Viridians.

For the People. By the People. From the People.


It should be the same process that turns people into Scooby Snacks. I should write White Dwarf and ask them.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820018.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820018.page GMT Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820022.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820022.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Gert wrote:
Apart from the fact it would be like top tier Heresy.JPG, humanity already has corpse starch made from people so mulching orks into meals isn't really required.

Corpse starch is objectively unsustainable as a sole food source. Think about it- how long could you live off a single human carcass? Probably a few weeks, if you ate everything. Certainly less than a year. So to support one human for a year would require multiple corpses.

It is just a supplement to other food sources to be efficient. There is a reason hives rely on imports and don't just recycle corpses for food.

That said, I'm not convinced eating aliens is heresy. Grox are aliens and widely farmed.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820027.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820027.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
The Imperium seems to hold hatred and fear specifically for sapient aliens. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820032.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820032.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Source: Against the Grain from the anthology No Good Men]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820036.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820036.page GMT Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820046.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820046.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Should you eat orks..? No. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820074.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820074.page GMT Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820092.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820092.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
If that wasn't the case squigs would actually be a great food source for humans, but they never seem to be used as such.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820117.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820117.page GMT Can you eat Orks? anything to excess because it leads to massive physiological changes and evolutionary dead ends,not because there's anything inherently harmful in eating Orks.

Needless to say humans do not have the same concerns about the side effects of eating things that the Kroot do. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820141.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820141.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
On a side note, its funny that Corpse Startch is widely accepted in the Imperium. In the story Siege of Castellax, there were slaves on an Iron Warriors world who were enraged upon finding out that their protein sticks were made from human corpses. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820149.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820149.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Ashiraya wrote:Grox are also essentially animals, more so than even the dumbest Ork.

The Imperium seems to hold hatred and fear specifically for sapient aliens.

That is fair, although that doesn't exclude squigs and probably snotlings.

kyrtuck wrote:I heard somewhere that Ork flesh has microbes thats harmful to humans and you have to cook them away.

On a side note, its funny that Corpse Startch is widely accepted in the Imperium. In the story Siege of Castellax, there were slaves on an Iron Warriors world who were enraged upon finding out that their protein sticks were made from human corpses.

Well, corpse starch is widely accepted on hive worlds where life is extremely cheap and the resources per person are scarce. I doubt it is anywhere near as normalised on many other Imperial worlds and I wouldn't be surprised if people from most civilised worlds would find the practice abhorrent.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820165.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820165.page GMT Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820170.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820170.page GMT Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820280.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820280.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Orkeosaurus wrote:
What's especially grimdark is you don't even get meat from the corpses, just starch. Could Kroot even survive on corpse starch?


I just put it up as a misleading name that has stuck. The human body does not contain significant amounts of starch. Even glycogen amounts to maybe 400-600g spread around the body. If you rendered a human body down for nutrients, what you would be getting is protein from all the meat and minerals from the skeleton.

Maybe the Imperium mixes the protein with starch from other sources (such as from crops). A hive world can get such sources from either imported crops or from locally raised flora. The teeming masses of a hive world generate a lot of human waste and that can be recycled and used as fertilizer. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820442.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820442.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Iracundus wrote:
 Orkeosaurus wrote:
What's especially grimdark is you don't even get meat from the corpses, just starch. Could Kroot even survive on corpse starch?


I just put it up as a misleading name that has stuck. The human body does not contain significant amounts of starch. Even glycogen amounts to maybe 400-600g spread around the body. If you rendered a human body down for nutrients, what you would be getting is protein from all the meat and minerals from the skeleton.

Maybe the Imperium mixes the protein with starch from other sources (such as from crops). A hive world can get such sources from either imported crops or from locally raised flora. The teeming masses of a hive world generate a lot of human waste and that can be recycled and used as fertilizer.

Valhalla, at the very least, provides at least part of the food for its hives via algae cultivation in the caves. I wonder if the energy source is photosynthesis via lamps or chemosynthesis.

It is a common theme that hive worlds are not self-sufficient and require regular imports from at least one nearby agri world to remain supplied with food. The Blight of Isessos is a Heresy-era example where the Alpha Legion took out three agri worlds and starved 90 billion Imperial citizens in the sector.

Edit: on corpse starch specifically, I suppose it is possible that the Imperium has some kind of bioreactor technology that converts animal remains into a more nutritious form- a kind of gluconeogenesis from the proteins and fats in the corpses. It could feasibly add energy into the output foodstuff from typical Imperial power sources, similar to how photosynthesis fixes solar energy into chemical forms.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820486.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820486.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Trouble is they are what they eat.

Predatory Species don’t taste terribly nice. And they can be filled with all sorts of nasties from their own diet.

What’s poisonous to a human may not be poisonous to an Ork. And whatever the active ingredient is? Will accumulate in their body, in turn making them hazardous to eat.

Just stick to enjoying your Corpse Starch and Soylent Viridians.

For the People. By the People. From the People.


Humans are also a predatory species full of nasty toxins and other pathogens (notably prions).
Humans are basically poisonous to humans.

So if we are being realistic corpse starch would lead to human extinction by prion bio-accumulation (or corpse starch isn't actually made from human corpses). ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820500.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820500.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
I’m crossing the streams here, and bringing in the Dreddiverse’s Resyk.

In MC-1, only the super wealthy get buried. Everyone else goes off to Resyk, where the body is rendered down into a wide variety of useful components and compounds. Though it’s not immediately apparent if that includes foodstuffs. But all the chemicals that make us up are rendered and separated for certain, and used to fuel the city’s many industries.

We don’t know for terribly certain how Corpse Starch is made, only that it’s By The Workers, For The Workers, From The Workers. And given there’s a process described, it seems unlikely it’s just gut/fillet/pack it.

Given Necromunda is essentially now a Recycling World? I would be surprised if the Corpse Starch process involves leeching out the nasties.

Then again, we can happily assume the denizens of the Underhive in particular have evolved a far greater tolerance for pollutants and chemicals just by Not Dying In Childhood Whilst Living In A Toxic Hell. So perhaps it’s not required.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820523.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820523.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Tyran wrote:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Trouble is they are what they eat.

Predatory Species don’t taste terribly nice. And they can be filled with all sorts of nasties from their own diet.

What’s poisonous to a human may not be poisonous to an Ork. And whatever the active ingredient is? Will accumulate in their body, in turn making them hazardous to eat.

Just stick to enjoying your Corpse Starch and Soylent Viridians.

For the People. By the People. From the People.


Humans are also a predatory species full of nasty toxins and other pathogens (notably prions).
Humans are basically poisonous to humans.

So if we are being realistic corpse starch would lead to human extinction by prion bio-accumulation (or corpse starch isn't actually made from human corpses).

That assumes that humanity hasn't worked out how to degrade/filter prions or remove other accumulative toxins like heavy metals in tens of thousands of years.

That said, I can imagine a plotline where the STC human recycler develops a fault that stops filtering out he prions and the Inquisition thinks there is a weird Nurgle outbreak that is actually just a technical fault.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820540.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820540.page GMT Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820680.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820680.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
As for an artificial way to filter them... I guess is possible but it would mean rendering down meat to its biomolecules, and if you can do that then you can do the same thing.to Orks, answering the OP with a "yes, as long as you do to it whatever you already do to human meat".]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820727.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820727.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
If your average hive worlder doesn't live past 35, they may never see the onset of a prionic infection.

With the huge populations you're dealing with it's also an intensive selective pressure which could very quickly select for resistance to, or delay of prionic disease onset.

So long as more meat is born for the eternal grinder, both the imperium and evolution are satisfied.

]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820729.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820729.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820734.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820734.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
 Tyran wrote:
While Prions are predominantly located in the brain and spinal cord, they can be found in any other part of the body.

As for an artificial way to filter them... I guess is possible but it would mean rendering down meat to its biomolecules, and if you can do that then you can do the same thing.to Orks, answering the OP with a "yes, as long as you do to it whatever you already do to human meat".

There is a reason I also said degrade. It is entirely plausible they have some kind of enzymatic soup for human proteins that denatures prions into a safe form, or an equivalent.

After all, we also cannot transplant brains or run cyborg slaves on artificial blood replacements either.

I agree it make work on Orks, but if the process is optimised for human proteins it might not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Hellebore wrote:
Prionic diseases are usually slow onset, as the misfolded proteins take time to bind to your correctly folded proteins and twist them into the misfolded shape, which then accumulates in your cells.

If your average hive worlder doesn't live past 35, they may never see the onset of a prionic infection.

With the huge populations you're dealing with it's also an intensive selective pressure which could very quickly select for resistance to, or delay of prionic disease onset.

So long as more meat is born for the eternal grinder, both the imperium and evolution are satisfied.


Also good points. Even Kuru tended to hit adults.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820921.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11820921.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks?
]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821137.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821137.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks? http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821252.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821252.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
Iracundus wrote:
 Orkeosaurus wrote:
What's especially grimdark is you don't even get meat from the corpses, just starch. Could Kroot even survive on corpse starch?


I just put it up as a misleading name that has stuck. The human body does not contain significant amounts of starch. Even glycogen amounts to maybe 400-600g spread around the body. If you rendered a human body down for nutrients, what you would be getting is protein from all the meat and minerals from the skeleton.

Maybe the Imperium mixes the protein with starch from other sources (such as from crops). A hive world can get such sources from either imported crops or from locally raised flora. The teeming masses of a hive world generate a lot of human waste and that can be recycled and used as fertilizer.

Actually if "corpse starch" was 90% plant starch with some supplemental protein mixed in from corpses that would explain the name and the nutritional value and why they can produce so much of it. Mystery solved?]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821378.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821378.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks?
Corpse starch seems to mostly be a slang term and not actually an official designation(at least in-universe). It just gets called that since dead bodies are recycled in with all the other organic material to make it because why waste perfectly good protein? Starch is probably there because I expect the stuff is bland and of questionable flavor, just like eating wet cornstarch, and since it also has dead human bodies in it mashing the two together just makes sense.

Lets face it, if some food stuff was available today that was any appreciable % human flesh it would get a slang term to reflect that.

I'll bet that all nutrient paste in the Imperium probably gets called Corpse starch even if a particular batch doesn't actually contain corpses.

This product is probably just a generic "Nutrient Paste" recipe that can be made with standardized equipment that you can feed any vaguely calorie containing material into to create a shelf-stable food stuff. The Imperium is also many things, but wasteful is not one of them, so bodies get recycled along with everything else.

You could have an Agri-world which processes all of its crops into a version of corpse starch that basically only contains vegetable matter, Another world which makes it using plankton and algae. And hive worlds which mix imported bulk corpse starch with any organic material that is recycled from the hive itself, including bodies. Specialized collection crew who collect dead bodies on battlefields to process the corpses and mix them in with the corpse starch rations heading to the front. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821389.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821389.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks?
 Grey Templar wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if it had extra stuff mixed in. You'd kinda need to since you can't feed a Hive on the corpses of its own dead indefinitely.

Corpse starch seems to mostly be a slang term and not actually an official designation(at least in-universe). It just gets called that since dead bodies are recycled in with all the other organic material to make it because why waste perfectly good protein? Starch is probably there because I expect the stuff is bland and of questionable flavor, just like eating wet cornstarch, and since it also has dead human bodies in it mashing the two together just makes sense.

Lets face it, if some food stuff was available today that was any appreciable % human flesh it would get a slang term to reflect that.

I'll bet that all nutrient paste in the Imperium probably gets called Corpse starch even if a particular batch doesn't actually contain corpses.

This product is probably just a generic "Nutrient Paste" recipe that can be made with standardized equipment that you can feed any vaguely calorie containing material into to create a shelf-stable food stuff. The Imperium is also many things, but wasteful is not one of them, so bodies get recycled along with everything else.

You could have an Agri-world which processes all of its crops into a version of corpse starch that basically only contains vegetable matter, Another world which makes it using plankton and algae. And hive worlds which mix imported bulk corpse starch with any organic material that is recycled from the hive itself, including bodies. Specialized collection crew who collect dead bodies on battlefields to process the corpses and mix them in with the corpse starch rations heading to the front.


Hive worlds probably import two kinds of food from offworld. For the rich there is natural food as people today would understand the term, and they might be in raw unprocessed form so the nobles of the spire can have freshly baked bread or grilled grox meat. Then for the masses there may be the raw material to make "corpse starch" or the imports might already be in ready to eat ration form as it might be easier to just process it at the source agri-world. If raw material this might then be mixed with the bodies of the dead in order to add some protein since otherwise humans cannot survive on no protein diets.

In Ian Watson's Inquisitor, after the hive world of Stalinvast gets rocked by a Genestealer cult rebellion that is successfully put down, there is an explosion of street food merchants selling a variety of meat products that probably everyone knows is human but nobody says it. For the poor, it might have even been a rare chance at tasting real meat rather than ultra-processed rations.

"Corpse starch" isn't the only term out there. In the hive city of Varangantua, the workers seem to subsist on starch ("fist-sized blocks of starch, reclaimed from the dregs of the food-processing plants of the more affluent districts of Varangantua"), Stamp ("the all-encompassing term for reconstituted protein of even more dubious origina than starch") and lho-sticks (cigarettes basically). A character's mother manages to get her hands on a treat: some vitamin supplements and a box of "carb-bars" which are described as a sort of "synthetic sucrose slab". So the equivalent of a cheap sweetened chocolate bar minus the chocolate.

On some worlds workers might exist in effectively unpaid slavery conditions where they work for food. On Varangantua there seems to be money even at the lowest levels of society (called "slate" on their world because the moeny exists in little chips). Though the workers existed in effective wage slavery, having the illusion of petty choice in what you bought for food might mean a little less unrest.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821428.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821428.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks?
Iracundus wrote:
On Varangantua there seems to be money even at the lowest levels of society (called "slate" on their world because the moeny exists in little chips). Though the workers existed in effective wage slavery, having the illusion of petty choice in what you bought for food might mean a little less unrest.

Ha what a wacky setting.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821529.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821529.page GMT Re:Can you eat Orks?
In the Rogue Trader DLCs you get to see part of the ship where people are farming algae and fungus for food. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821725.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821725.page GMT Can you eat Orks?
I mean, we can reinforce breakfast cereals with additional vitamins and minerals, and I believe those can be synthesised entirely. At least the vitamins.

So, in terms of what humans need and can’t synthesis in their own bodies (not allowing for ancient STC genetic fiddlin’) you’d add Vitamin D and C.

Vitamin D because we need sunlight to synthesise that, and Vitamin C because the gene responsible for that is turned off in humans.

But again, that’s assuming no en masse genetic tinkering went on with the original colonists leaving ancient Terra for the stars. Certainly with 40K’s level of gene science? Turning on the Vitaman C gene seems entirely sensible, and pretty trivial, because it’s already there. You just need to know how to switch it on.

I appreciate some might find that a cop out? But given we see Kin and possibly other Abhumans as the beneficiaries of quite extreme genetic tailoring, the better to ensure their survival on various worlds? Making edits to improve or relieve nutrition considerations seems like a no-brainer.]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821760.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/818893/11821760.page GMT