Is Human Placenta Vegetarian?
LatestOn one hand, vegetarianism describes a lifestyle in which meat-eating is eschewed almost always for the sake of ethical, health, or environmental concerns (or some combination of any of those elements). In that case, eating human placenta, which was just going to plop out and exist anyway, shouldn’t disturb that practice. On the other hand, human placenta really looks like meat! On a third hand that I’m about to bite off, further complicating this issue with actual cannibalism, a lot of vegetarian food really looks like meat. Beyond Burgers “bleed” and approximate hamburgers cooked rare. And they’re great.
This question arises not because I will ever actually have the opportunity of eating the placenta of my significant other (I’m gay and anyway, no thanks—I’m full) but because food writer Eddie Lin reports that he cooked his wife’s placenta and ate it in the appropriately titled Cosmopolitan.com essay, “I Cooked My Wife’s Placenta. Here’s How It Tasted.” Said placenta was “the size of a whoopee cushion, sprawling with thick blood vessels, dripping in amniotic fluid, and trailing a slimy umbilical cord.” OK, right, sounds like about the meatiest experience I could imagine.