Strange

Cooking Your Placenta with NY Magazine

by NowPublic Staff | August 22, 2011 at 01:56 pm

282 views | 1 Recommendation | 4 comments

Placenta Cookbook: 'Looks Like Brisket'

New York Magazine posted an article called "The Placenta Cookbook", which, as the title suggests, walks you through cooking your (or your partner's, or a stranger's) afterbirth.

Suddenly Bill Clinton's choice to go vegan is looking pretty solid, but you must hand it to NY Mag for presenting a story about eating one's own placenta in such a fantastically quotable and shareable manner. Also, Katherine Parker Almanas' photos are excellent.

Here are the steps to cooking a placenta:

Drain blood and blot dry
Cook for half an hour
Remove placenta from heat. "Will resemble brisket." (?! Our Troll-o-Meter started beeping here, but it's real)
Chop into slivers & place in dehydrator overnight.

Placentophagy (the eating of one's own placenta) is indeed real: it is believed to help with post-partum depression. There are quite a few placenta recipes out there, should you choose to flex a bit of Google-Fu.

Hey, your baby's been eating it for nine months, so it clearly has some nutritional value. However, Dr. Maggie Blott of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says that there is no point in modern women eating their placentas:

"Animals eat their placenta to get nutrition - but when people are already well-nourished, there is no benefit, there is no reason to do it," she says.

Blott also dismisses the theory that placentophagy helps with post-partum depression. There are quite a few videos on the subject, such as the one below. It's no more graphic than a regular cooking video.

1 See all footage | View Slideshow

Share: email story | add to any | | facebook | stumbleupon

recommend This comment thread is now closed

Jordan Yerman

at 13:57 on August 22nd, 2011

We'd love to hear your comments on this story, but ask yourself before you click the Post button: "Is my comment sexist?" If the answer is yes, then please don't post it.

The 1

at 14:46 on August 22nd, 2011

Placentophagy (from 'placenta' + Greek φαγειν, to eat) is the act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after childbirth.

Humans eat just about everything else..An acceptance problem with it might be the mental or emotional twist in how eating a human part could be perceived by the general public. Or what it might lead to within some fringe cult or satanic worship groups. I believe this limited practice has actually been around for sometime now.

Teddcool (not verified)

at 03:09 on August 23rd, 2011

This is quite an informative website with varied information from people all over the globe. All these news stories and blogs that are present here are interesting to read and can help one understand more about health.

leslieB (not verified)

at 00:40 on August 25th, 2011

Liver-like and bluish in coloring, a persons placenta is thought to be biohazardous waste by the U.S. professional medical network, so it is normally discarded. But every so often, groups of American dads and moms take to ingesting the placenta, rather than allowing what they consider to be so much waste, states New York Magazine. While doctors scoff at the notion, some women view eating the placenta as a way to fight postpartum blues and other maladies. Placenta is now <a title="On the menu for parents: Eating the placenta" href="www.newsytype.com/10499-eating-placenta-placentophagia/">On the menu for parents: Eating the placenta</a>. While many Western doctors discourage placentophagia with the claim that it carries no inherent benefits, studies have shown that eating the placenta can curb postpartum depression, replenish nutrients, increase milk production, and slow postpartum hemmorrhage.