I just encountered the expression “placenta-eating-advocates” in a blog post. I’m hoping against all hope that “placenta” is some kind of a tofu-like substance. Or a fruit. Somebody needs to tell me that placentas these advocates are eating are not actual placentas.
I’d research this but I haven’t been feeling too well today and I’m afraid I will throw up.
Clarissa's Blog 
No; they mean actual placentas. Yes, they are advocating for auto-cannibalism.
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I’m still speechless. I’m sure somebody has found a psychological explanation. I need to find it.
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When I was born, the hospital offered to give my mom the placenta to eat. She declined.
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The human body offers all sorts of possibilities. Right now, I’m manufacturing snot balls, as I have a cold. I might consider marketing and selling these.
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This thread is a best substitute for a diet anybody could invent. I think we should patent it and start charging money. 🙂
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It is claimed that eating the placenta has many health benefits; I have no idea to what extent this is true or untrue.
I think that some animals eat the placenta in nature and I wouldn’t want to forbid the consumption of the placenta in humans, but I find the concept personally disturbing.
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From what I understand, pregnancy takes a lot of important nutrients from a woman’s body. It takes a lot of time after delivery for her to recover. Eating the placenta replenishes these nutrients more quickly, instead of just discarding them. I think this is especially true of vegetarians, some of whom have told me that placenta eating is the only moral exception (for them) to their refusal to eat anything but plant products.
This all seems plausible to me, but I am not aware of any hard science on the subject.
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A relative of mine drank her own urine for years based on a very similar theory. That’s all she could talk about, and it was some sort of an obsession for her to get everybody else to drink theirs.
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I recall a passage in Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt, which refers to “sheeps’ placentas lying uneaten in the grass”. Perhaps that disqualifies sheep from being advocates. Or something.
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Aren’t we humans amazing?
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Forgot to include my most favorite quote from Feministe:
And psychological explanation:
OK, last one and I stop. This woman definitely got the best result:
I love plants, and were I living in my own house with a garden, planting a beautiful cherry tree over the organ to grow strong and show future grandkids sounds kind of nice.
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This totally reminded me of that joke about burying grandpa in the garden to save on fertilizer. 🙂
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Regarding the Feministe quote:
“I’ve eaten all three of my placentas – it wasn’t that great.”
Perhaps she didn’t cook her placenta, lightly salted with onions and garlic. If she had she may have described herself as a “happy camper” as the other woman who wrote about her experience on the food blog.
Wouldn’t make me happy, but to each his own.
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Yes, maybe she is simply a lousy cook. 🙂 🙂
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Here’s an article about it.
http://nymag.com/news/features/placenta-2011-8/
Trigger alert: It has photographs.
IMO, the article will reinforce Clarissa’s opinions about doulas.
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Here’s another article:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/686/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-placenta-stew
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I’ve read several articles about this only because an interview peaked my interest. Otherwise, I’d never heard of it until I read about it on a food blog. A woman whose kitchen was featured was also the subject of an interview. When asked, “What’s the most memorable meal you’ve ever cooked in this kitchen?”
Her response was, “In all honesty it was made for me by my midwife and I am prepared for the reaction it might incite. It was my placenta with onions and garlic and lightly salted. And it tasted just like liver and I was a happy camper and felt quite good about the whole process.”
I decided to do my own research and found several articles, so yes, it’s true. And then I read another article about a woman who kills squirrels and then eats them. It was her solution to dealing with the abudance of squirrels that she had in her yard.
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“Her response was, “In all honesty it was made for me by my midwife and I am prepared for the reaction it might incite. It was my placenta with onions and garlic and lightly salted. And it tasted just like liver and I was a happy camper and felt quite good about the whole process.””
– A severely disturbed individual.
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Actually, they claim there are supposed to be “health benefits” to the mother, so afterbirth is now encapsulated as well and marketed as nutritional supplements. Of course, there are no clinical trials to support this (as this article states). It’s a cottage industry and of course they do not want government intervention by way of standards and regulation. Here’s a link to another article about it, if you are interested:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/placenta-pill-maker-nutritional-supplement_n_886420.html?
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I can’t even figure out what’s worse, eating your own or somebody else’s.
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Isn’t it a typical American filmic trope whereby the upper-middle class mother basically goes nuts, becomes all New Age and does strange stuff in a last ditch attempt to escape from the mundanity of suburbia, by turning to mysticism and vague concepts of Nature?
I can think of American Beauty and American Horror Story, where the woman resorts to odd practices. In the second, she eats brains to nurture her growing child.
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