You may want to wait until after lunch to read about the latest fad in childbirth: placenta-eating. The practice has been around for a while, and many animals do it, but it’s now enjoying renewed popularity among humans.
According to New York Magazine, placentophagia, as it’s called, enjoyed a popularity boost in 2007, when placenta activist Jodi Selander convinced a Las Vegas hospital to release the organs to women so they could eat them post-partum. Now women across the country are enjoying (I guess) their afterbirth cooked, dehydrated, made into pills, or blended in smoothies. Some claim the practice helps with lactation problems and post-partum depression, but there’s no scientific evidence to support this. And the words of “placenta-preparer” Jennifer Mayer don’t do much to dispel the notion that placentophagia is a flakey hippie phenomenon. While getting ready to cook one new mother’s afterbirth, she says,
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