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Placenta Eating Offers No Benefit To Mom

Posted by timothy on from the may-I-interest-you-in-some-calamari? dept.

Dave Knott writes: While some celebrity moms swear by it and have made it trendy, a new study says that consuming the placenta after birth offers women and their babies no benefit. In fact, the practice — known as placentophagy — may even pose unknown risks to mothers and infants, according to a team from Northwestern University in Chicago, who pored over the accumulated research on the issue. They found no data to support that eating the placenta — either raw, cooked or in pill form — protects against postpartum depression, reduces pain after childbirth, increases a woman's energy, helps with lactation, improves mother-child bonding, replenishes iron in the body, or improves skin elasticity. The researchers also said that there are no studies examining the risks associated with eating the placenta, which acts as a filter to absorb and protect fetuses from toxins and pollutants.

6 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Disgusting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Not because animals does it that it means it's good.

    1. Re:Disgusting... by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Animals do it because, as long as they can digest it, it's a significant source of nutrition right after massive energy and biomass expenditure.

      Humans do not suffer from lack of other sources for replenishment as animals do. There's no need to go hunting for prey to get food after birth.

    2. Re:Disgusting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's completely different from eating shit. Transplanting someone else's gut bacteria into your's is a medical procedure that can help or cure many things. Now if those stars are doing it for those reason or not, who knows.

      Many animals eat shit because they can smell some undigested food in it and their immune systems can handle it. Human immune systems don't handle it as well nor and we have access to plenty of non-shitty food.

  2. Animals eat the placenta because ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... they need to conceal their where about, to leave no trace of their young ones from being hunted down

    As for humans ... they are simply stupid

  3. Re:Actually it has some medical effects. by Gaygirlie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Oestrogen injections or bovine or human placenta in the diet had no effect." -- In addition to what the other commenter posted this tidbit I quoted here is quite important: humans are eating human placenta, not rat placenta, so the whole comparison is null and void from the get-go. You simply cannot deducate that "hey, rats eating rat placenta cause hormonal levels to change, therefore humans eating human placenta must do the same!"

  4. Re:Eating Filters by Falos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Every day you eat slimy, endless snot and there's nothing you can about it.

    That's probably one of the milder items in the "your whiny criteria will qualify you as disgusting" backpack.