Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Forget the baby, check out that afterbirth!
Placentophagy is when a woman eats her placenta. Weird, right? Well it's not all that unusual. Many animals eat their placentas, including monkeys. Recently, more and more women have started to follow this funky trend mostly for the nutritional value. Eating a placenta is said to aid in postpartum depression. The placenta is high in progesterone which is a steroid hormone that supports gestation and oxytocin which stimulates contractions of the uterus and the ejection of milk. Mmm-mmmm!
Placentas can be cooked, surprising like any other meat. You can stew them, make them into a burger, bake them, fry them, or even bbq them! Some women even drink them in shakes. In most cases, the placenta is dried out like jerky and eaten as such or dried and ground as a lovely seasoning to sprinkle over your food as you would salt or pepper. A majority of women choose to have the dry ground placenta put into capsules to stretch out their nutritional value (and probably to pretend they're not eating their placenta). If you would like to eat your placenta then you must have a special placenta cook come to your house (by law it must be in the placenta owner's house) and prepare it. Have no fear, she will probably use her own tools and they make sure to keep her work area clean. And it's not recommended that you go buy a slab of placenta on amazon because as your own placenta is good for you, another woman's placenta can be dangerous. Placentas are full of blood and can carry diseases, yuck. Want more info:http://pregnancy.about.com/od/placenta/a/placentarecipes.htm
*While looking up info on placentas, I found out that they can also make your placenta into a teddy bear! Akward....
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All that I have to say is that I was thoroughly creeped out by that article. Although I gagged a couple of times while reading it, some of it was very educational. I had no idea that women even considered eating the placenta. It is interesting to note how many things a pregnant womans body does for her. Some things that may be taboo such as this, probably kept ancient women from having menopause. I guess I just have one question... Were you to have a child would you ever consider eating the placenta?
ReplyDeleteHaha, I am not sure how my pregnant mind will work but as of now, no, I will not eat my placenta. :P
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