6 Ways to Eat Your Placenta
Placenta Smoothie, anyone?
If you can get beyond the initial “ewwww!” factor of eating your placenta (technically know as placentophagy, if you’re wondering), the debate on whether your placenta provides any unique health benefits is quite interesting.
While maybe cultures, especially those that follow Traditional Chinese Medicine techniques, revere the practice, other cultures – like our own – typically find it to be a bit gross and possibly cannibalistic.
While the Western scientific community is still out on whether placentophagy is beneficial, proponents argue that the placenta contains high levels of prostaglandin, which stimulates a shrinking of the uterus after delivery. Additionally, the practice is thought to reduce rates of postpartum depression, increase milk supply, and speed along a mother’s recovery. The placenta notably contains high levels of iron and Vitamin-B12.
Interestingly enough, many hospitals consider placentas to be ‘biohazardous waste’ and will fight patients who want to take their placentas home. Other hospitals require that the patient’s doctor signs a release form before they allow the placenta to be carted off in a cooler.
Here are six common ways (well, relatively speaking) that women consume their placentas following birth:
- Some Like It Raw: A potential midwife told me a story of how one of her patients, who wouldn’t stop hemorrhaging after birth, calmly asked for a knife, carved a bit of placenta off, and ate it… raw. For what it’s worth, the bleeding stopped almost immediately afterwards.
- Others Like It Neat: Most women, of course, do not go the raw route and opt for something a little more – well, neat. There are many services that will pick up your placenta from the hospital (or your house if you had a home birth or were not legally allowed to release your placenta to someone else at the hospital), dehydrate it, and encapsulate it in pill form. A bloody, messy placenta disappears, and a neat little bottle of ‘vitamins’ comes back. I can stomach that.
- Some DIY: There are some very interesting tutorials on how to encapsulate your own placenta at home, saving you money (but perhaps not time). Here’s one example.
- Others Blend It Up: Placenta Smoothie, anyone?
- Some Do the Jerky: Using a dehydrator, some moms opt to dehydrate their placenta in strips. Word is that it tastes much like regular jerky.
- Others Go Gourmet: Yes, you can apparently make Roast Placenta, Placenta Cocktail (with V-8 juice), Placenta Lasagne, or Placenta Spaghetti Bologna. Here are the recipes.
Would you eat your placenta? As my husband is a Traditional Chinese Medicine physician, I’m planning on having a service encapsulate mine into pills. I figure it can’t hurt – and as long as I don’t have to eat raw placenta meat, I’m cool with it.
I encapsulated mine with my second. I still have a few pills in the fridge for the days where I’m a hormonal mess.
Most mammals eat their placenta after they give birth. I think it’s a pretty natural thing. That being said, I don’t think I could stomach placenta in it’s placenta-like form. The pill route seems pretty awesome.
I personally have eaten it raw twice and will continue to do so for as many babies as I have. The five seconds it takes to swallow just a small portion of my placenta far out weighed the possible PPD I would experience without doing so. You get more from it if you eat it raw right after birth. I tincture the rest and can then have it to utilize forever for myself and my child.
I plan to have a smoothie straightaway and encapsulate the rest. Other mammals would not eat theirs if there was no benefit and it makes total sense to me.
Actually, the anthropological literature dates the first sighting of placentophagy to an indigenous group of California homebirth advocates (I kid you not). In “Consuming the inedible: neglected dimensions of food choice,” MacClancy and colleagues report:
“… In association with the natural childbirh movement from the 1960’s placentophagia was taken up in some ‘Western’ societies, especially in California, on the basis that it was ‘natural’, as ‘all’ mammalian species eat the placenta. The problem with this is that not all mammals are regularly placentophagous and our closest primate relatives also are not placentophagous… [M]odern placentophagia is based on an inaccurate idea of making the human birthing process more ‘natural’.”
In other words, eating the human placenta is not natural and it is an affectation dreamed up by California hippies.
Can eating the placenta replenish depleted iron and give you more energy?
In the world of cooking, the placenta would be considered an “organ meat” and could theoretically improve iron levels. In fact, it may do so in species that are regularly placentophagous. Of course, eating any part of any human being could probably do the same. And though it is theoretically possible, there are no studies that have shown that it occurs.
Can the placenta decrease postpartum bleeding?
In other words, does the placenta contain utero-tonic substances like oxytocin? There’s no reason to believe it does and considerable reason to believe it does not.
The purpose of the placenta is to interface with the mother’s circulation and thereby transfer oxygen and nutrients. Contractions of the uterus interfere with that function (when the uterus contracts, exchange cannot take place) and may cause the placenta to shear away from the wall of the uterus (an abruption). There is no reason to believe that eating the placenta will prevent postpartum bleeding.
Can eating the placenta increase milk production?
In other words, is the placenta a galactagogue? I could find only two papers on the subject. One was published in the BMJ … in 1917. The other, quoted by Placenta Benefits.info is Placenta as Lactagagon published in 1954 by Soykova-Pachnerova in the journal Gynaecologia. The study is poorly done and has never been replicated.
The bottom line is that there is no evidence that eating the placenta increases milk production.
Can eating the placenta prevent postpartum depression?
No. According to Pec Indman, a psychotherapist who specializes in postpartum mood disorders:
“Although there has not been one study (not even poorly done) about the effects in humans on placental ingestion, the claims are that it prevents the blues and PPD …which contributes the spread of misinformation about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. There is no evidence that the freeze drying processing of placental tissues maintains the integrity of the hormones, protein, and iron. There is no evidence about any part of this process to warrant a recommendation.”
Indman’s comment about the integrity of placental components highlights another important issue. There is no evidence that the placenta contains hormones that are biologically active in increasing milk supply, decreasing postpartum bleeding or improving postpartum mood. But even if the placenta did contain such hormones, you’d still have to show that they survived biologically intact, did not get destroyed by the acid in the stomach, existed in a form that could be absorbed in the intestine, and are absorbed in a form that could be utilized by human cells.
When it comes to placentophagia, advocates are batting zero. Eating the placenta is NOT a natural process for humans. Indigenous peoples around the world did NOT eat the placenta. There is NO evidence that eating the placenta improves iron stores. There is NO evidence that eating the placenta prevents postpartum bleeding. There is NO evidence that eating the placenta improves milk supply. And there is NO evidence that eating the placenta prevents or treats postpartum depression.
I am sorry if I offend anyone but I personally do not feel a human should eat their placenta. Yes, most animals eat it but there are so many medical advances for humans that we do not need to resort to such barbaric measures to treat our medical needs. Bottom line, I think it’s disgusting to consume your placenta, in any form.
Animals eat their poop and vommit too…just sayin.
I really would love to do placenta encapsulation, mostly because the women in my family don’t have the greatest milk supply, most drying up around the 6 month mark. The problem is that the service to me is more than 2 hours away! Such a bummer because I’d hate to beat myself up if my supply does dry up for something that might have been prevented.
Very interesting. I’m not sure what I would do!
Side note: please spell check/edit your articles.
I’m not sure I could eat it especially not in an recognisable form. I’d never ask for anything else that was removed from my body if I had surgery so don’t think I would want to keep anything that came out naturally.
I know a lot of people say that animals eat theirs but some animals also eat their babies so not the greatest argument in the world for that!
Animals eat instinctively and out of fear of starvation and, as a result, often gorge on what’s available. That they eat placentae doesn’t make them discerning dietitians. Given the chance a dog will eat chocolate until it kills itself. A snake will consume an entire dear despite being incapacitated for a week following. To think that animals eat their placentae because they have some supernatural knowledge of nutrition inherent to the animal kingdom is preposterous anthropomorphism.
I consumed a piece of my placenta in its raw form in a smoothie. I would have never even known that the smoothie contained placenta. I also had the rest of my placenta encapsulated and a small piece of it was used to make a tincture. I am so glad that I’ve done all of these things. I can really tell when I take “my vitamins” (as my husband calls them) and I will definitely be using the tincture for my son and I for years to come. You only get one placenta per baby, you might as well get its full use.