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Dear Helena,
Some friends of mine had a home birth and are very gung-ho about the fact that they ate their placenta. They froze it, where it hung out next to the Ben & Jerry's in plain sight, and then they made a smoothie out of it and are planning on feeding some of it to their kid in capsule form on his first day of school. This has been a topic of discussion on more than one occasion, and frankly I find it kind of nauseating. Am I in the wrong for considering this conversation oversharing, or has placenta-eating become mainstream enough that it's politically incorrect of me to have a problem with it?
—Enough About Your Placenta
Dear Enough About Your Placenta,
If a placenta smoothie makes you squeamish, you probably don't want to hear about the friend of mine whose husband, a renowned chef, sautéed her placenta with sherry, apples, and onions. They shared it for dinner. "It tasted gamy, kind of like squab," he said. She is saving the rest to make a placenta-infused vodka that is supposed to alleviate the symptoms of menopause. But in general, it's extremely rare for humans to indulge in placentophagy. Yes, most mammals do it (except for camels and marine mammals), but that doesn't mean your friends need to provide details, unless other people solicit them.
For those unfamiliar with this practice, devotees of placenta-eating believe that it can ward off postpartum depression and provide other health benefits. Unlike my friend, most mothers prefer to mask the taste of the placenta by blending it into a smoothie, as your friends did, or better yet, by drying it and making it into pills, a service for which specialists charge $250 to $300. But even professionals admit that the placenta is a little revolting. Jenya Rose, who runs Placenta Bakery, a placenta encapsulation service, says, "It's pretty gross when you're working with it." It's a hefty, vein-covered slab of meat that can weigh several pounds, and because it's full of blood, preparation can be seriously messy.
From time to time, a chef gets PR for cooking a placenta—most recently, Chef Daniel Patterson used his wife's placenta in a Bolognese sauce and put together an entertaining class about placenta-cooking held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. But cooking a placenta is like making breast-milk cheese: attention-getting for sure, but still a fringe practice. According to Placenta Benefits, California has the greatest concentration of specialists (no surprise there). But in Chicago, where Placenta Bakery's Rose lives, placentophagy is practically unknown. "I get two calls a year," she says. Suzanne Connole, an acupuncturist and herbalist in Brooklyn who offers placenta encapsulation, says that outside the Brooklyn home-birth crowd, the practice is rare on the East Coast. "My family members who live in New England find it really, really odd."
So why do placenta-eaters feel the need to go on and on about it? For the same reason new parents feel compelled to regale you with every detail of their "birth story." They are so high on the whole incredible experience of birth that they completely lose perspective. (I can't be the only person who has listened to a blow-by-blow account of a gruesome episiotomy during dinner.)
Nonetheless, placenta-eating parents should realize that other people may be thoroughly grossed out by the practice. Raving on about it is insensitive, just as it's insensitive to gush to a vegan friend about the fat, juicy steak you had for dinner. Thankfully, shutting your friends up is simple. Start with a white lie: "I think it's cool you saved the placenta." Then say, "But I'd much rather hear all about your baby." As any new parent knows, this topic never gets old.
So excited to see a discussion about placenta eating on Chow! I'd like to share a friend's first hand account of cooking and eating placenta! They grilled and made tacos out of their placenta. I wonder how it would be braised? That's the method I would use to cook placenta.
I posted about this a few years ago and it got removed. Glad to see that us 'Hounders have gotten less uptight since then...+READ
So excited to see a discussion about placenta eating on Chow! I'd like to share a friend's first hand account of cooking and eating placenta! They grilled and made tacos out of their placenta. I wonder how it would be braised? That's the method I would use to cook placenta.
I posted about this a few years ago and it got removed. Glad to see that us 'Hounders have gotten less uptight since then and the site has commissioned a column about it! Without providing an outbound link to the source material, here's a cut/paste as suggested by the moderators. Really interesting stuff that I sincerely think my fellow Hounds will find to be good info. If you want to see pictures, I'd suggest doing an internet search for the text below and finding the original article (not going to provide a link to a search engine as outbound links are somewhat against Chowhound etiquette).
Without further ado, here's what it's like to cook and eat a placenta, Texas style!
BABY-CUE: PLACENTA SERVED TWO WAYS
By Trace Crutchfield
Eating a human placenta is harder than you might imagine. First off, they are difficult to trap. Growing up in the hippie mecca of Austin, Texas, one heard about earth-mother types planting their infants’ placentas under trees and even grinding them up into smoothies. It seemed like no big deal. So when my buddy knocked up his wife, we began plotting a BBQ accordingly. We asked the midwife to smuggle out the goods for us, but she was a bit worried. We promised her some weed and she agreed to try. Hippies!
She wrapped the placenta up in a biohazard bag, met me outside the hospital, nervously handed it over, then shooed me off. I tossed it into a small, iced-up 7-Eleven Styrofoam cooler, got on my bicycle, and rode off, baby cocoon on board. I felt like Elliott, pedaling away with E.T. on his handlebars.
The placenta preparation was one of the most ungodly rituals in which I have ever engaged. When you kill animals, it’s important to wash the blood out of them before cooking. (When cows are taken to the slaughterhouse, one of the first things they do is chop off their feet so the beating heart will pump out all the blood.) Same idea with stringing up a goat or sheep before slitting its throat—something cavemen figured out, I guess. Since a placenta is essentially a sack of blood vessels, the cleaning process takes a long time. A really long time. It was about the size of a full brisket, say four pounds, but with the addition of a one-meter-long white umbilical cord.
The menu was twofold: I would make a stew, like a Mexican carne guisada, in an attempt to soften up the texture for tacos, and the rest would be shish-kebabed. It took a while to cook, as this is not the type of thing one wants to eat medium rare. By the time we were ready to give it a go, the taco concoction had been going for about an hour and a half, and I was quite hungry and more than a little drunk. But I was still supersqueamish. When I emerged from the kitchen with a tray of placenta tacos, the guys seemed particularly unnerved. A surprising number of the chicks were greedily indulging as the offerings were passed around. Reticently, I forced myself to try.
The tacos were more challenging because they were gooier, while the kebabs had a bit of crunch from the fire. The human meat had a spongy texture to it, sort of like brains or kidneys. I have never eaten brains or kidneys, but I imagine they would feel similar in the mouth. Somehow, I ate everything handed me, and in the end sort of wished dinner had been twins. To the list of achievements on my résumé, I proudly added Cannibalism.-COLLAPSE
Youre right about mad cow disease but not about kuru.
Nicole - sorry, but yeah. That speech talks about an infectious disease being spread by cannibalism. Mad cow disease was spread to humans not by cannibalism but by ingestion of nervous system components (brain, spinal tissue) of OTHER species. Plus, since traditionally the only human who eats the placenta is the mother herself, what she is eating is tissue produced by and within her own body - by...+READ
Nicole - sorry, but yeah. That speech talks about an infectious disease being spread by cannibalism. Mad cow disease was spread to humans not by cannibalism but by ingestion of nervous system components (brain, spinal tissue) of OTHER species. Plus, since traditionally the only human who eats the placenta is the mother herself, what she is eating is tissue produced by and within her own body - by definition incapable of giving her any type of infection that she doesn't already have (unless of course it's left out to spoil before cooking). If the husband joins in I suppose there could be some minimal risk of him picking up an infection that she had, but he'd likely have been exposed to that in some other way already.
My main point is that the level of hysteria on this thread expressed on the subject is just silly.-COLLAPSE
BobB- This is a speech given during the 1976 Nobel Prize ceremony. The man who discovered that Kuru was linked to cannibalism won the Nobel Prize.
Am I still off on my science? :}
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1976/presentation-speech.html
Bobbyperu, good to see your post, one of the few rational ones on this thread. I'm with you - it's not my thing (and fortunately I've never been presented with the choice of whether to share in eating one or not), but I'm not going to go all "EEWWW" on someone for choosing it. It is indeed a normal thing for most mammals and many humans to do, and those who are squealing about mad cow disease and...+READ
Bobbyperu, good to see your post, one of the few rational ones on this thread. I'm with you - it's not my thing (and fortunately I've never been presented with the choice of whether to share in eating one or not), but I'm not going to go all "EEWWW" on someone for choosing it. It is indeed a normal thing for most mammals and many humans to do, and those who are squealing about mad cow disease and the like are way off on their science.-COLLAPSE
Berrybabe- I'm trying to understand your point. Obviously animals have not started wars; they haven't created the civilizations necessary to start them. And yes, people have done horrendous things to each other and to our planet. However, does that negate all of the wonderful things that we have done or are capable of doing? As a teacher I always tell my students that if we want things to change...+READ
Berrybabe- I'm trying to understand your point. Obviously animals have not started wars; they haven't created the civilizations necessary to start them. And yes, people have done horrendous things to each other and to our planet. However, does that negate all of the wonderful things that we have done or are capable of doing? As a teacher I always tell my students that if we want things to change we have to sometimes help make the changes ourselves. As for kuru, of course it's always possible that there is an alternative explanation. However it's very telling that members of the tribe in question from Papua new guinea admitted the cannibalism... And the link between kuru and mad cow disease is remarkably close.-COLLAPSE
To those saying that Kuru resulted directly from cannibalism, some believe that it might actually have been manganese poisoning(1)... And even if it is truly a result of cannibalism, the brain is considered to be the "most infectious", which a placenta most definitely is not(2).
(1)http://www.ourcivilisation.com/madcow/kuru.htm
(1)http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/220043-overview
...+READ
To those saying that Kuru resulted directly from cannibalism, some believe that it might actually have been manganese poisoning(1)... And even if it is truly a result of cannibalism, the brain is considered to be the "most infectious", which a placenta most definitely is not(2).
(1)http://www.ourcivilisation.com/madcow/kuru.htm
(1)http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/220043-overview
@NicoleFriedman: Animals also have not started the wars we have, the cruelties in human nature, or the harm to Mother Nature that humans have. They also do not subject other species, both plant and animal, to the cruelty that humans have done and some unfortunately continue to do.
All that being said, if I were to decide to eat my own placenta after giving birth, I would be the only one touching it, and I certainly wouldn't be advertising it to all my friends and family. I say "if I were" because I probably won't--heck, I'll probably have entirely forgotten about this article by the time that event rolls around, and it probably won't even occur to me that I could eat it. Eating someone else's placenta, on the other hand, would be just nasty...and it's even nastier that the parents in this article are going to force their kid to eat it...-COLLAPSE
Why not just eat the baby?
I think I just lost my stomach! That's nasty!
www.brickpizzeria.com
Really Nasty Stuff!
I have a friend who did a home birth and buried the placenta;planting a tree on the same spot where she takes the child on her birthday to visit. I think this is a much better usage of the rich resources from the placenta without putting it on the menu!
Many animals eat their own feces....I guess that means humans should do it.
You have some very mentally challenged friends.
Bodidi- I have to disagree with your statement. People who bite their nails do not deliberately cook them. The technical term for cannibalism is "homophagy". By eating your own placenta, the term is "autohomophagy". What LaLaGoGo said about Kuru and Mad Cow was absolutely correct. Kuru was a disease discovered in Papua New Guinea. The women and children of a mountain tribe believed that it was...+READ
Bodidi- I have to disagree with your statement. People who bite their nails do not deliberately cook them. The technical term for cannibalism is "homophagy". By eating your own placenta, the term is "autohomophagy". What LaLaGoGo said about Kuru and Mad Cow was absolutely correct. Kuru was a disease discovered in Papua New Guinea. The women and children of a mountain tribe believed that it was respectful to their dead to consume them (for some reason the grown men didn't participate in this ritual). Later in life the tribe would experience symptoms akin to Mad Cow Disease (it turns out the diseases are very much related). Cannibalism, when disguised as something else, has been popular in Western Culture off an on. Europeans used to grind up Egyptian mummies and use it as medicine for example. However, if you were told that you were a cannibal for doing so, I doubt most people would have done it. When disguised as something civilized, people can easily fall into denial. The same goes with the eating of the placenta. By inviting friends over, having a cocktail party... people assume that because you don't "feel like" a cannibal, you're not Jeffrey Dahmer. But the consumption of part of a human is what it is, no matter how you cloak it.-COLLAPSE
Some of your posts have me ROTFWL, but ...Eeeww!... Is the right expression. However, I don't think cannibalism is an appropriate term for eating one's own placenta. I think it is more akin to biting your nails or chewing your cuticles, neither of which is healthy. I'd like to see a spoof of Alton Brown hosting a "Good Eats" show on the subject.
"A lot of other mammals do it..." Yes, and many animals eat their own poop, too. What wine goes with poop?
Cannibalism by any other name....
Maybe if they handed them out for free at the local hospital the cannibals won't have to kill other people to get their FIX. They can chow down on human food any time. I suggest drive up windows???
Its gluten free and vegan safe... Why not?
I thought this kind of thing disappeared after 1971. Gross. They must really be charged up about it. Sending it off for encapsulation is a cop out unless they sear some of it for dinner. With fava beans. And a nice Chianti.
There seems to be a conspicuous absence of fact in this post and the comments.
From Young & Benyshek 2010 in the journal Ecology of Food and Nutrition
"The conspicuous absence of cultural traditions associated with maternal placentophagy in the cross-cultural ethnographic record raises interesting questions relative to its ubiquitous presence among nearly all other mammals, and the reasons...+READ
There seems to be a conspicuous absence of fact in this post and the comments.
From Young & Benyshek 2010 in the journal Ecology of Food and Nutrition
"The conspicuous absence of cultural traditions associated with maternal placentophagy in the cross-cultural ethnographic record raises interesting questions relative to its ubiquitous presence among nearly all other mammals, and the reasons for its absence (or extreme rarity) among prehistoric/historic and contemporary human cultures."-COLLAPSE
The can eat what they wish, but my wish is that they kept it to themselves.
Eeewww... I think they'd be better off eating their children, before they grow up with a palate like their mother's.
To Bobbyperu- Eating any part of a human IS cannibalism. You can use euphemisms to disguise what you're doing, but that's what it is. I'm just curious why you're surprised at people being "judgy" on this topic. Obviously the article was written knowing how controversial it is and that it would illicit a strong response. People like myself are reacting so strongly because it's about the blatantly...+READ
To Bobbyperu- Eating any part of a human IS cannibalism. You can use euphemisms to disguise what you're doing, but that's what it is. I'm just curious why you're surprised at people being "judgy" on this topic. Obviously the article was written knowing how controversial it is and that it would illicit a strong response. People like myself are reacting so strongly because it's about the blatantly in your face breaking of a HUGE cultural taboo. You want to burp in my face? Eat icecream with your fingers? Walk around naked? We may find it strange but such things are not going to make us feel the way cannibalism does... for the very reason I stated in a previous response. Technically we are of the animal kingdom but due to our minds we have surpassed it; no animal has built civilizations, or has been capable of creating great works of literature, art, gone to space... to eat a human placenta; to practice a blatant form of cannibalism is to bring us back down to the level of animals. This, at least in my mind, is why I have such a feeling of disgust and revulsion. While I laud the vegan for abstaining from eating meat (which I myself do not do), I find this person's logic baffling... for they are okay with associating humans as meat... putting humans on the same level as an animal.-COLLAPSE
i must say that helena's recent column topics. . .replacing her fixation with all things alcoholic, with all things of/related to human birth/biology, coinciding with the birth of her own child, is very interesting. she's running with a different crowd lately, maybe. this is an "out there" topic. if it were the subject of a regular chowhound thread, i think it would be preemptively locked by the...+READ
i must say that helena's recent column topics. . .replacing her fixation with all things alcoholic, with all things of/related to human birth/biology, coinciding with the birth of her own child, is very interesting. she's running with a different crowd lately, maybe. this is an "out there" topic. if it were the subject of a regular chowhound thread, i think it would be preemptively locked by the mods, no? the comments are already not terribly fun to read.
i did know a guy who planned to feed his wife's placenta to his dog (theory was that the animal would then accept the new baby into the household without jealousy issues-- whatever), but he wound up "celebrating" too hard following the birth, and left the placenta at a local bar. what happened to the organ next is anyone's speculation, and it's a little much for my overactive imagination, to be honest. :(-COLLAPSE
My goodness, the comments are negative and judgy on this topic. It's not cannibalism. Yes, I think it's gross. Yes, my son is going to be born in 3 weeks and I have NO plans to do this. But, as the article says, almost every mammalian species does eat the placenta and humans outside of the narrow views of the european christian worldview have done this and many cultures still do it. It is...+READ
My goodness, the comments are negative and judgy on this topic. It's not cannibalism. Yes, I think it's gross. Yes, my son is going to be born in 3 weeks and I have NO plans to do this. But, as the article says, almost every mammalian species does eat the placenta and humans outside of the narrow views of the european christian worldview have done this and many cultures still do it. It is nutrient-rich, and has proven benefits. I'm squeamish about this, and think it's gross, but I'm not going to hate on others for it - isn't this site about such things?-COLLAPSE
Please, kill me now
I'm with enough. I think his friends are whack jobs who took the whole birth as an "experience" to the Nth degree. He needs to back away slowly, don't make eye contact, and don't speak to them again for 18 years.
I'm there with NicoleFriedman; this smacks of cannibalism, or something very akin to it. Let's stick to breast milk cheese, and leave this alone.
This whole subject is revolting.
OMG! This on a food site..well it may take all kinds but this one really triggered my gag reflex!
I have one more thing to add- cannibalism is a strong taboo in almost every single society around the world because to eat any part of a human relegates humans to animals; and we are not animals... unless we act like them.
The one redeeming part of this topic is the Brit show where they persuaded the vegan to eat some because it was cruelty-free.
The etiquette moral should be don't offer your friends things that they are likely to find revolting in the extreme.
Please understand the dangers of cannibalism. Kuru and Mad Cow Disease are terrible realities, and there's strong scientific evidence they came about by feeding humans to humans and cows to cows, respectively.
If you know anyone considering eating human placenta, strongly discourage that person for his or her own safety. There's other ways to treat postpartum depression.
Sure it's edible. But really, you're going to eat that? Sorry, that's way too funky for me. I also know people who will drink their urine during a fast with the thought it's good for you, but no can do.....
I think is cool you shaved your placenta.
"Am I in the wrong for considering this conversation oversharing". YES, It's gross. I can't believe such an article is even on this site. Sickening!!
I saw something on the food network once. It was a british show. They got a vegan to eat it because as they pointed out no animal had suffered to provide it. I still blanch at the thought of it. I much prefer the traditions where they bury it under a tree.
Obviously, someone has hacked into this site and posted this as aa joke. I am going to pretend I didn't read this. Pass the brain scraper, please.
I'm sure these are the same idiots that wear spandex bicycle shorts.
I'm shocked that this could possibly even be legal; eating a human placenta is the very definition of cannibalism. You can argue for the health benefits, blah blah blah but I find it absolutely revolting. Not just because I find the concept of eating any part of a human disgusting, but that anyone would be arrogant enough to believe that their views trump an ingrained cultural revulsion. If...+READ
I'm shocked that this could possibly even be legal; eating a human placenta is the very definition of cannibalism. You can argue for the health benefits, blah blah blah but I find it absolutely revolting. Not just because I find the concept of eating any part of a human disgusting, but that anyone would be arrogant enough to believe that their views trump an ingrained cultural revulsion. If you're going to do it, keep it to yourself. And absolutely no way should you subject your child to your beliefs... they're a child.-COLLAPSE
Urk... it was quite enough for me to see the placenta. To actually consume it? No effin' way!!!
How has no one commented on the fact that this couple plans on giving their kid a placenta capsule on his first day of school? I can't imagine a 5 or 6 year old taking it if they knew what it was, so I'm going to guess that they won't tell him what's in the pill. That just feels so wrong and icky. Poor kid.
You've got to be f'ing kidding..
placenta vodka that helps you deal with menopause symptoms? I will go halfway with you on that one... Nothing like a hot flash to get you over your hot flash, no fetal support organs needed!
Ugh, I shouldn't have read this right after eating breakfast...
Every time one of our many cows gave birth, our dogs would be all over that delicious, delicious hot cow placenta. A primal lupine feast, steaming in the cold morning air.
I'd then grimace at the dogs, leave, and then go back inside.
I'd imagine a similar course of action if this ever comes up with my human friends in the future.