“Maternal placentophagy” is a thing now. This modern obsession involves mothers eating their own placenta, the organ that connects the fetus to the wall of the uterus and gives it nourishment.
Mad Men star January Jones advised new moms to eat their placentas to avoid postpartum depression, and even Kim Kardashian toyed with the idea.
As popular as the eat-your-own-placenta trend is, Guardian contributor Nicholas Baines is the first guy we’ve heard of to make his wife’s placenta into a taco (fried with a little garlic and paprika), as well as eat it raw in a smoothie.
Most placenta-eaters are women who eat their own placenta; what’s more, these women usually consume it dehydrated, in capsule form. Not Baines.
Baines describes his motivation for eating placenta,
So, what we really want to know is the best way to cook placenta, right? When Baines Googled placenta recipes, he found one for lasagne and pizza, plus an entire book dedicated to cooking with placenta.
What Baines discovered after extensive cooking and taste testing was: placenta cooked with spices and stuffed into a tortilla is a superior cooking method to eating placenta raw in a smoothie.
About the raw placenta smoothie, Baines writes,
But the cooked placenta taco was far more appetizing to Baines. He writes,
Although Baines had read about a mother who felt weird and jittery after ingesting placenta—and then went into a rage-and-tears-filled fit—Baines said he felt fine after eating it (other than feeling nauseous from the smoothie).
Mark Kristal, a professor at the University at Buffalo and expert on placentophagy, says,
We guess Baines didn’t really care so much about Kristal’s advice.
[via The Guardian]
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