There is a haunting phrase, "long pig", that was once used to describe what you served when you had someone for dinner.
I darkly suspect that the reason is that we taste somewhat like pork (rather than like chicken). People and pigs are both omnivores, and you are what you eat...
After an age of dining on fish and young goblins, Gollum seemed quite anxious to see how Bilbo tasted. Perhaps even to Beorn's bear's nose, Bilbo smelled like a rabbit! (Rabbits are mighty tasty, too!)
By the way, read Tolkien's poem THE MEWLIPS (*Gilthalion cringes!) to see an interesting treatment of cannibalism in some pretty creepy verse!
At any rate, the wicked rumour about cannibalism is that people taste goooood! In any event, I imagine that criminals, with their coarse diets and hard lives, would not taste as good as church ladies (who are awfully sweet, after all).
What kind of "fell meats" did Sauron feed the winged mounts of the Nazgul? Aye, we wonders...
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