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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.

15 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. obPennyArcade by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oddly, Penny Arcade has this covered.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  2. Why half measures? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Eat the baby too, and get *all* your nutrients back.

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    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  3. 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

    1. Re:Animals eat the placenta because ... by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

      ... and wild animals don't waste valuable calories or protein. It's not that the nutrients in the placenta are *especially* good for you, it's just that nutrients period are good for you and hard to come by.

      I once went on a winter hike with a park ranger, and he identified some tracks in the snow as coyote tracks. So I naturally asked how he could tell it was a coyote and not a dog being taken for a walk. The answer was that domestic dogs are so well-fed they waste energy running all over the place; coyotes are always on the edge of starvation so they nearly always travel in a perfectly straight line.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  4. 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.

  5. Re:Actually it has some medical effects. by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Except that rats have a different fertility cycle from humans. Which makes direct hormonal comparisons pointless.

    They are also known to eat their own feces for nutrition. Which makes their gastrointestinal tract quite different.

    Concluding presence of direct "medical effects" from these two key differences between species based on a rat study and ignoring the human study is frankly idiotic.

  6. 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!"

  7. Re:Disgusting... by binarstu · · Score: 2

    Cats eat vomit. Rabbits eat shit.

    And humans pay big money to eat cat shit.

    (No, civets are not true felines, but they are in the same superfamily, which is probably close enough for the purposes of this discussion.)

  8. Don't stick your dick in crazy. by jcr · · Score: 2

    What more is there to say?

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  9. "may even pose unknown risks" by zephvark · · Score: 2

    Straight-out weasel wording, your sign that there is no information here, let alone "news for nerds". Or did placenta-eating become a nerd thing while I wasn't looking? /hands in nerd card

  10. Eating Filters by Culture20 · · Score: 2

    Livers, kidneys. People eat filters all the time.

    1. 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.

  11. Duh by nitehawk214 · · Score: 2

    How about this benefit: you can say to your child: "If you don't settle down, I will eat you. I have done it before."

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    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  12. Re:Disgusting... by kimvette · · Score: 2

    > 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.

    Even many animals which cannot digest it (herbivores) consume it. It's not to get nutrition but to reduce odors which attract predators. It's their way of picking it up so they can carry and defaecate it away from where their offspring are.

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  13. Devil's Advocate by briancox2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ok, so I just want to clarify here. I have no feeling one way or the other about this activity.

    They are saying that there is no KNOWN benefit to this practice and there COULD BE bad consequences.
    So how is that different than saying that there COULD BE benefits but there are no KNOWN bad consequences?

    Aren't they really just reporting "We don't know one way or the other"? Except, as usual, the reporting has a slant injected into it.

    --
    We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.