December 17, 2001

7:05 PM

Cooking Your Placenta!"The practice of eating placentas was also fashionable in the 1970s ... but its popularity has since declined." Plus, some yummy reciepes! Not hungry? Make some art with your placenta.
posted by skwm (30 comments total)

via cruel.com, mostly.
posted by skwm at 7:05 PM on December 17, 2001

*crosses fingers* please Santa, no cooked placentas in my stocking this Christmas... Not again!
posted by Dark Messiah at 7:26 PM on December 17, 2001

damn, skwm, where were you around Thanksgiving?
posted by machaus at 7:41 PM on December 17, 2001

The scary thing is, I saw this on a TLC episode of "A Baby Story." You know, the show before "A Wedding Story"?? It was on a few years ago, and it's disturbed me ever since. They just sauteed it in a wok or something. I still can't believe TLC put it on TV.
posted by UWliberal at 7:53 PM on December 17, 2001

Well, UW dogs eat the placenta so we should too...but then again dogs lick their own nuts and you wouldn't want to ....ummm never mind.
posted by jonmc at 7:57 PM on December 17, 2001

I remember reading somewhere (long long ago - pre Web) that Erik Estrada (the CHiPs actor, not the singer) saved the placenta and umbilical cord from the birth of his first child, and even kept part of the cord in a necklace.

Of course, it could have been one of those whacked out stories from the tabloids, but now it rings true.

posted by jordanbrock at 7:58 PM on December 17, 2001

Gross.
posted by catatonic at 8:18 PM on December 17, 2001

This goes along with the practice of Lotus Birth, in which the placenta and umbilical cord are not severed from the baby mechanically, but are allowed to coexist with baby until they naturally detach several days post-partum. This is, reportedly, a less traumatic experience for the child who is not, therefore, violentally robbed of his "womb-mate" and source of comfort and sustenance.

It sounds completely off the wall until you've read the fifth or sixth birthstory, and if you're already on the crunchy granola side of parenting, you'll start to find a bit of sympathy for the idea. And then (hopefully) you regain your senses...
posted by Dreama at 8:19 PM on December 17, 2001

My stepfather (Guatemalan) used to purchase human placenta as a cure for baldness. No, I don't know how how he applied it...and no, it didn't work.
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:26 PM on December 17, 2001

On the Lifestyle Channel in Australia has a show called TV Dinners. The host, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, "invades the homes of Britain in search of hidden connoisseurs of culinary genius." He found a treat when a woman cooked up her baby's placenta at the baby's naming ceremony.

As you might imagine, this caused quite a bit of controversy. On a personal note, it was so disgusting to watch (not only the cooking, but the 'commentary' provided by the happy family that I had to turn the thing off.
posted by cyniczny at 8:37 PM on December 17, 2001

As you might imagine, this caused quite a bit of controversy.

I'll pass on the placenta polenta, personally, but I'm curious about the source of the controversy. I mean, besides being grossed out, what do people actually have to complain about in finding this while channel surfing? Do they think it's something that 'just ain't right', is contrary to what they think is pub(l)ic decency, is too intimate to show...? Gross, yea I think so but not fit for tv? I'd rather watch that than someone get shot in the head, but I'm a bit of a nut that way.
posted by holycola at 8:59 PM on December 17, 2001

Well, would you want to watch that guy who's cutting off his feet fry them up and serve them at a party? Placenta is human tissue, essentially a (temporary) organ, and eating it is basically cannibalism.
posted by kindall at 9:03 PM on December 17, 2001

My favorite Straight Dope Story ever.
posted by willnot at 9:04 PM on December 17, 2001

I've known a few folks who buried the placenta in the yard and then planted a tree over it, so as the kids grew up they each had "their" tree, but this is just wrong, wrong, wrong.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:01 PM on December 17, 2001

A friend and I used to joke about the idea of making salsa based on placentas...called SALCENTA of course. Just a thought mind you.
posted by faithnomore at 10:17 PM on December 17, 2001

Gross.

As gross as geophagy? Or grosser?
posted by youthbc1 at 10:49 PM on December 17, 2001

Grosser.
posted by black8 at 12:44 AM on December 18, 2001

sounds like a fine idea for any meat eating parent or family, sadly as it is taboo discussion may be difficult for some.
is it possible that knee-jerk disgust is not the best way to respond to this concept?
try to describe why this practice may be unsound, without using the words 'gross' or 'digusting'.
kindall - is this so different from drinking a mother's milk?
(i am not talking about the dubious practice of drinking someone else's mother's milk, which seems to be so popular in the west - 'dairy produce').
posted by asok at 3:03 AM on December 18, 2001

kindall: eating it is basically cannibalism

Pshaw. Are cows cannibals? They wolf it down. So do wolves, come to that, and most other non-human mammals.

Eating placenta may be weird, but that doesn't make it unnatural, just unusual. At least you know where it's been.
posted by ceiriog at 3:11 AM on December 18, 2001

it's also a hair treatment.
posted by kliuless at 3:53 AM on December 18, 2001

Here, asok, have some soy placenta substitute.
posted by darukaru at 3:58 AM on December 18, 2001

Those who find this topic "gross," how'd you survive your nine months before birth? What was your life support system?
posted by Carol Anne at 4:28 AM on December 18, 2001

Those who find this topic "gross," how'd you survive your nine months before birth? What was your life support system?

I was breastfed even longer than that. Doesn't mean I want to make pizza out of my mother's breasts.
posted by straight at 6:41 AM on December 18, 2001

The fact that something is natural and beautiful and intimately associated with the birth process doesn’t mean you should EAT IT. There’s something disingenuous about claims that placenta-eating is not gross. Sure, it’s a natural part of the body, a by-product of birth. But do you also reserve and drink the amniotic fluid? The meconium? I have a daughter. I’ve cut an umbilical cord. I think birth is a wonderful, beautiful process. But I don’t think that lapping up the spilled blood from my wife’s torn perineum would’ve connected me to the process any more deeply.

And it seems to me that cooking the placenta invalidates the claim that one is doing something natural and connecting. One wouldn’t expect to see wolves, cows, etc., firing up the Weber for some lovely placenta steaks.

Finally, I don’t think that anyone would really like to rely on the rule that, since dogs eat it, we should too. Dogs eat each others’ poo, as well as that of other animals. I, for one, do not rely on Fido’s culinary guidance.
posted by MrMoonPie at 6:47 AM on December 18, 2001

Those who find this topic "gross," how'd you survive your nine months before birth? What was your life support system?

A six pack of Schlitz and a half a pack of Camels™. I love progressive parenting.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:21 AM on December 18, 2001

Oh...

GOD...

As far as not being gross? Well, there are a lot of things in this world that are not gross untill you consider putting them in your mouth. My general rule: Once it comes out of the body, it shouldn't go back in.
posted by delmoi at 10:18 AM on December 18, 2001

One thing I am suprised no-one is talking about is planting the placenta. (instructions) I did not do it on my first child, but on my next (due July 2,2002), I plan on planting a Cherry Blossom Tree with the placenta.

On a curious side note, New Zealand is all for this practice
posted by patrickje at 11:20 AM on December 18, 2001

Hell, I thought all the meat-eaters on MeFi would perk up at the mention of another delicious meat dish.

Odd how it's ok with them to slaughter another sentient being to eat it's muscles, yet they all balk at a little placenta.

Pantywaists.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 3:19 PM on December 18, 2001

Don't you have a pet-store raid to plan for PETA?
posted by darukaru at 3:59 PM on December 18, 2001

Sure, it’s a natural part of the body, a by-product of birth. But do you also reserve and drink the amniotic fluid? The meconium?

Okay, first off, *geeearkh*.

Second of all, what's the significance of eating the placenta? I just don't get it. I don't get the significance of planting it either. Was I supposed to have bonded with my placenta as a child? Is it good fertilizer?
posted by amanda at 5:23 PM on December 18, 2001