Oh yes, this topic came up in our birthing class too. It has kind of become a running joke in our class after that NYMag story came out in August.

I actually think placentophaging might be a candidate for Jack Shafer's Bogus Trend Story of the Week - lots of people talking about, nobody actually doing it (except those that read the stories and want to be on the cusp of the trend).

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/making-sense-of-news/1057...

It's true that placenta has many different kinds of nutrients, such as protein, and chemicals like Prostaglandin and Oxytocin. Oxytocin has been associated with Maternal behavior, mom-baby bonding, social recognition, and orgasm.......... However, if you really want the good stuff in there, it would make more sense to eat it raw rather than going through the whole process of steaming and drying. Some ingredients like Prostaglandin has a very short half-life, they get inactivated really easily during the process. Eww.......there is probably nothing wrong with the act. But it's so hard to accept it psychologically, since we are supposed to be civilized.

It's white woman woo.

There's no medical basis.

There's no real basis in Ayurveda or AOM, either.

It's f'ing disgusting.

That said, as soon as we came down to LA my wife started encapsulating placentas.

We've made roughly $8k doing it.

We've prepared the placentas of some of the most famous starlets in Hollywood. This is not something poor people do.

(before you ask, we steam them in a rice cooker with lemon and ginger out on the deck, then slice them into super-thin slices, then bake them for 14 hours at low temp to drive off all moisture, then grind them up and encapsulate, all in dedicated never-used-for-anything-else hardware)

The reasoning: somebody is going to make money doing this. Might as well be us.

But yes. It takes a special kind of batshit to eat your placenta. Here, let me show you what kind of batshit it takes:

http://nymag.com/news/features/placenta-2011-8/

Both of my cousins ate their placentas. Both of them barbecued them. But then, both of them are amongst the craziest bitches I know.

For true nightmare fuel, look up "placenta butter."

I recall watching our springer spaniel eat her placenta after giving birth to a litter of puppies. I was probably 7 or 8. My father explained to me that the placenta was rich in protein and high in calories, so it made sense for animals to eat it, especially since she needs to nurse the new litter, and food might be hard to obtain right away.

I suppose if we were in a survival situation, eating the placenta might make sense. However, food is in abundance...

Eating the placenta raw and right away seems to be the only reasonable strategy. No doubt our long-time ancestors probably did eat the placenta, but it's very unlikely that any significant portion of them dried it out and consumed it over the course of several weeks. -That is, the argument that it's natural and good for you needs to match up with an evolutionary basis. I can't see one for encapsulation.

Also, saying 'nutrients and hormones' doesn't go very far, especially when the benefits are so difficult to measure (depression, lack of energy, etc.), and probably could be equally treated with the placebo effect.

My wife is pregnant. I think I will fix some healthy meals after delivery. The effort to prepare the placenta, and the psychological struggle that it would require, isn't worth it, IMHO.