My parents were “friends” (read, he was their pot dealer) that was a super strict vegetarian. He and his wife made a chili out of their first born’s placenta. When my dad said, “WTF??” His explanation was, “It’s the only meat one can consume without killing something.”
Dad, “Please don’t ever invite us over for dinner, thanks.”
Urk. It isn’t even meat, except perhaps in the sense of “organ meat.” Meat is muscle, and the placenta doesn’t include muscle tissue. It’s mostly vascular and connective.
I think I’ve been desensitized to gross stuff on the internet, because the thought this story gave me was, “I should start that chili in the crock pot tonight; then it will be super delicious by lunch time.”
I hasten to add that I am making my chili with ground beef, not placenta.
A friend of mine in college suggested growing tumors as a source of meat. She changed her mind when I started describing how the interior of a large tumor can quickly become necrotic…
Yeah. I decided to eat dinner at my computer tonight. A nice medium rare steak. Then thought it would be a good plan to visit Regretsy while biting into a delicious, particularly juicy piece.
My 8th grade homeroom teacher decided to tell us exactly what hot dogs were made of…while we were in the cafeteria eating hot dogs. I think I was the only one who kept eating.
You know how Bones starts with the particularly gross scenes? The day I sat down with mac and cheese to watch a particularly maggoty episode was probably the worst pairing ever.
Yummy, yummy, yummy
I got love in my tummy
and I feel like placent’in you
love you’re such a sweet thing
good enough to eat thing
And that’s just what I’m gonna goo
Ooh love to catch ya
Ooh love to hold ya
Ooh I love it so!
It looks very evil indeed, like the lure of a gateway drug. You may think you’ll only do placenta, but according to the diagram, you’ll end up consuming the baby too.
^This^
Not to mention when the new (Human) mother needs a boost of vitamins and energy after just giving birth, they can just yell out and get whatever they need as as much as they need. Other placenta-eating mammals don’t. So they eat the placenta.
Would you please explain this to The U.S. Army? They made maternity camo uniforms. When is a pregnant woman going to be hiding in the woods? Is this the appropriate dinner attire for placenta eating?
Not only that, but isn’t the whole point of the placenta to filter out toxins that might pass to the baby? Eating something that’s been marinading in 9 months worth of toxic shit doesn’t really sound “sacred” or “life sustaining”.
Someone else said this the last time we had a placentaphagia post.
I don’t believe this is true. The placenta filters the toxins and passes them into the mother’s blood, which takes them to her kidneys and she pees them out along with her own toxins. It doesn’t just soak them up like a sponge and hold onto them.
That doesn’t make placenta-eating less gross, I just wanted to be accurate. There’s a lot of misconceptions about how the body handles toxins. They don’t hang around, they come out with your pee. The only way to really detox is to drink more.
I found out a little while ago that some mammals, such as dogs, will lick their offsprings’ little bums to induce bowel movements. I really hope to never see that bit of mammal-rearing-advice catching on.
Or other wonderful tidbits, like eating your own children if disturbed.
Most mammals, in fact. I’m a hedgehog rehabilitator and although I haven’t had to deal with orphaned babies myself, I have several books that describe how to stimulate little hoglets to urinate and defecate with a damp q-tip.
If you don’t, they literally can’t go, and they’ll actually die fairly quickly.
I can imagine it must be a lot of fun. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t come out and get drunk with you. I have to stay at home and rub the arses and naughty bits of some baby hedgehogs with a cotton bud.”
You have to do the same thing with orphaned puppies, use a damp cloth to stimulate defecating and urinating. That’s why its easier to find a mom with pups that will take them.
I almost want to suggest the butt licking to the seller. I bet if I worded it as pretentiously as this listing I could convince her it’s a good idea. The problem is that I think I could convince her it’s a good idea.
We could make a long list of things we do differently from other mammals. It’s not a bad thing. While the animal world outside of homo sapiens is a wondrous thing, I still say vive la difference.
This post really needs to link back to the whole ‘do art with your placenta’ thing. They’re slightly related with the whole “can I eat it after I do art with it?” question.
Even if it WASN’T a placenta we were talking about, why would you pay someone fifty dollars to tell you how to eat something? What is the discussion that needs to take place there? Here, I’ll do it: “Dip it in batter and call it a corn dog”. Fifty dollars, please.
I just checked, and alas there does not seem to have been a Battle Placenta.
I’m simultaneously surprised, disappointed, and just a bit relieved. I do, however, now know what suggestion to make with regards to my cousin’s baby shower theme.
My roommate collects cookie cutters, and every time I see those I am SO TEMPTED, but as this is her house, I dare not push my luck. I like my happy home.
Maybe someday when we part ways I will get her one.
Also because it provides them with nutrients that allow them to nurse their young, since it will probably be a while before they can leave the babies alone and go hunting for real food.
Human’s don’t need to do that, because we have bottles and supermarkets, and aren’t faced with having to spend the first week of their life constantly feeding our babies.
I dunno about the first week, but I certainly recall walking through Target while nursing my son. I did have the courtesy to cover with a nursing apron; not every man, woman and child needed to gaze upon my areola. I did the hearts-and-flowers rocking and cooing nursing — but when shit had to get done, the baby came too. He got fed, and I got shit done. Win win.
^Wish I could have done that . . . unfortunately, the football hold (baby on the side) was the ONLY one that was manageable with my, um, ample breasts. So not only did I have to sit down the ENTIRE time I was nursing, it had to be on a couch with pillows. My newborn daughter nursed for 45 minutes per session, 10-12 times a day. Do the math . . . it was literally a full-time job!
This is just me, but I haven’t had a good puke since the age of 13. It is always a little bit, in my mouth, and always at inapproriate times. Like watching cat videos on YouTube or something.
I didn’t puke from anything other than being drunk for a long, long time. Every once in a while I’d catch a virus that made me so nauseous that I wanted to puke, but no actual puke. Only except was wicked vertigo a couple years ago – I had the spins so bad I felt constantly drunk, and was puking like a spigot into a bucket in the ER. The bucket too much like a KFC bucket for me NOT to wipe my chin, turn to my husband and say, “that’s finger-lickin’ good.”
heh, when i went to the doctor for that she tested me for pregnancy, told me i wasn’t, then prescibed me nexium. 3 months later i find out that i had been preggers the whole time.
I wouldn’t pay someone to tell me how to cook part of myself (my kid?) and eat it.
Mostly because I’m vegetarian, partially because I would rather use it in art, and partially because I’m 16 and have no wish for the pitter-patter of tiny, screaming feet.
You could probably still eat your placenta after you dip it in paint and press it all over your living room walls–if you wash it well first, of course.
I was trying to reply to bethymania. @silverleaf79: oh god, no. Given the weird shit that some foodies eat (offal, testicles, haggis *gag*) I’m sure there’s some foodie out there who’d love to discuss with you the subtle differences in flavor of cow boogers vs. pig boogers.
Someone around here said it would be ok since nothing had to die, but I don’t know all the vegan/vegetarian “rules” lol. My one friend who is vegetarian always ends up eating meat accidentally actually, I’ll have to ask her!
It’s interesting, really, where do you draw the line?
I mean, if you had your finger accidentally torn off, is it okay to eat that? What about someone else’s finger, if they were okay with you chowing down on it?
No snark or criticism intended, I’m genuinely interested. Every single one of us has some kind of dietary restriction and I’m just wondering how far people would be prepared to go.
Mind you, I was always fascinated by those morality type questions, like “if you had to choose one, would you kill a disabled child or an old woman?” or “If you’re on a sinking boat with 9 other people and you have to throw one person off or you all die, who do you choose?” and the psychological reasons why we find some choices easy and some harder. I’m weird, I guess.
Cindy-Loo Hoohoo: don’t knock haggis. There is a farm near my parents’ place that makes a haggis out of various non-organ beef cuts and OH MY GOD I never thought I would be able to say I liked haggis. (It’s more in the spirit of the haggis recipe, than the law…)
What difference would it make if haggis was made with offal or lean meat? It doesn’t taste of offal anyway. It tastes of oatmeal, onions and lots of salt and pepper. I make a mushroom haggis which tastes exactly like the real thing.
I get fed up with people dissing haggis because it
s got offal in it. You don’t complain about the eyeballs in your hot dog, do you? No, because you can’t taste them. Out of sight, out of mind.
I liked the visual of screaming feet, tho. I’m sure there’s an adult video somewhere with that theme. I would look for it, but my nightmares are frightening enough as it is.
It was actually the artist’s blood and semen mixed. Not the greatest thing to think about, but I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like that up for sale!
you know what else mammals do that humans don’t? lick their kids’ assholes and abandon their defected baby to die in the forest.
yes, we are mammals…but there are MANY things that mammals do that humans don’t. let’s try to keep it that way…..
I think s/he’s specifically reacting to the “Plenty of things mammals do that humans don’t” part of the previous post but I’m going to dock them both a thumbs up–one for leaving out ‘other’ and one for failing at critical reading.
Oi ve. Really? I can understand the whole green thing, but just look at how many cloth diapers and diaper covers you can buy on Etsy, for example! A lot less awful.
Oh, there are people who do that. At the bookstore I work at I’ve seen materials on how to raise diaper-free kids. I can’t remember what it entails, though. Some people do it by basically raising their kid for the first couple years suspended over a toilet. Good times.
I learned about it by proxy through a green mommy blog lady who was considering doing it, and yep, it’s basically just suspending your kid over a toilet to go, being prepared to clean up lots of messes, and learning to recognize when they have to go.
Fifty bucks for this person to work with me to come up with the perfect way to prepare my placenta? Um, I just Googled “placenta recipes” for FREE. Take that, ETSY!
Website says… “Placenta must be cut in half and rubbed with sea salt to cure it. After it is dried out, it is treated with an emulsifying mixture of tannin and egg yolk to make it soft and pliable. Then, you craft it into a teddy bear.” *hurk*
@inmediasres: I think this proves there’s no afterlife. If there was, Teddy Roosevelt would have gotten vengeance from beyond the grave for this. I’d like to think he would, anyway.
I will never understand the “falling off naturally” thing. I mean, ewww. And I simply refuse to understand that the bear is made of human placenta leather.
I was reading about the ‘letting the cord fall off naturally thing’ somewhere the other day (the site referred to it as ‘Lotus Birth,’ though what it had to do with lotuses is beyond me), and most doctor’s consider it a dangerous practice. Once the placenta is delivered, it’s basically dead, as is the cord. Which means there’s no circulation in the cord, the blood stagnates, and it can result in the baby developing a potentially life-threatening case of septicemia.
Plus, of course, you have to haul the whole thing around with you for however long it takes the cord to drop off naturally.And it smells to high heaven.
People justify it by saying “Well, pioneer women did it,’ conveniently forgetting that the infant mortality rate back then was sky high,. Hell, even into the 1920s, my grandmother had 11 children, and only seven of them survived to grow to adulthood.
I am so glad I was out cold when I had my c-section, had I gotten to know my placenta I would have likely wanted to name it…make a tree print with it, use it for crafting material and ingest it in a warm embrace of all its life giving properties….its probably a good thing that I never saw it after delivery.
I wonder where it is today….is it happy…..is it a bear….did some stranger worship it as I should have or if it was abandoned and unloved.
The thing is, if you look upon it as an object of scientific interest, it’s not disgusting. The midwife showed me mine – I don’t recall asking her to, but I did think it was very interesting. A bit like a tree.
But that intellectual curiousity would have been sadly curtailed if anyone suggested I EAT THE THING.
See, I went to read the comments on the Placentabear and there were a lot of level-headed replies – some people being weirded out, some people trying to make a case for it – but then I got to this:
And what if this teddy bear was made for a mom who’s baby was born not alive? The mom might treasure it.
HUAAAAAAAAARRRRGH I have to take all of the showers in the WORLD
If a mother takes comfort in crafting a teddybear from a stillborn placenta… I think she needs a lot more than teddy – perhaps a psychologist. I really feel for women who lose their babies, but it sure seems more beneficial to get some help if you’re having trouble coping rather than making a bear out of your dead child’s placenta.
I’m not even exaggerating, my skin crawled when I tried to imagine it. There aren’t many things that get to me, but great googly moogly, stillborn baby toys would be one of them…
I’m all for coping in your own way. Some people take a year; some people take a month. However, ‘coping’ and ‘unhealthy fixation’ are two entirely different things.
In fairness I can’t imagine anyone getting over a stillbirth in a month. I imagine a year is a more realistic lower threshold – and it’s the kind of thing you’d still be thinking about decades later.
On the one hand we have someone proposing you eat the placenta because animals do it in nature…..not realizing that there are very good reasons animals do so, ie: predators, needing something to eat while recovering, etc…things humans don’t need to worry about.
And with “lotus birth” you have the opposite, leaving a useless spent organ hanging from your baby with the danger of it becoming “malodorous” contrary to nature’s example which has every creature in it chewing through the cord and getting rid of the placenta.
And both practices being a result of hippie bullshit and having ZERO benefit.
maybe you should suggest to the nature-wombyn (in a superior tone of voice) that if they were truly doing as nature intended they or their husband would gnaw it off.
mammals do it, so we must!
And by “checking in”, I mean I’m still alive because even my hippie parents had the sense to cut the fucking cord. Hell, mine were even of the “let’s go to the hospital for this event” school.
Awww shit, a friend of mine did the “lotus” baby thing (I’d forgotten what it was called), and I’m so glad this was before I knew her.
She said they kept the placenta attached until the smell got to be too much. She has no idea how lucky she is that her daughter turned out healthy in spite of the unsanitary hippie crap.
Are these people fucking kidding? The pictures on the wikipedia page for the lotus birth were super nasty. Who wants to cart around something that looks like an enlarged heart for several days?
So if you are a crack addict does this give you a freebie by eating it? Also by comparing humans to animals that eat grass to settle thier stomach makes me question the judgement of those who want too.
Some do. Some just eat it because they like it. My cat will climb up my leg, yelling, to get at a piece of fresh grass – and she’s barfed maybe once or twice in the five years we’ve had her.
(Growing up, we had pukey cats – my brother and I were trained at an early age to rush cats to hard surfaces if we heard that dreaded *hurk hurk hurk* sound.)
Either (a) you are acting like a non-human mammal mother, in which case, why the heck are you cooking the thing? Non-human animals simply eat it, raw and unseasoned, no recipe needed. And wouldn’t cooking it destroy any of the nutrients that supposedly are the other reason to eat such a thing?
Or (b) you are a human being who wants to eat a cooked placenta, for some weird reason, in which case why the heck are you justifying it by what other animals do, since human beings are the only animals that cook their food?
Also, why do these people always cite cats as their exemplars? Wouldn’t chimps or gorillas make more sense? (Do chimps eat their placentas?)
In fairness, though, I’ve ALSO seen them (apes) using their own urine stream as a drinking fountain. Unless you’ve been trapped in a cave for several days, it’d be wiser to go get a Gatorade.
I think cats are a. traditionally seen as models for labor (they’re supposed to be lucky in a delivery room), and b. may be the only nonhuman mammal a lot of people have seen give birth.
hmmmmmmm…she went to college and wonders why wild animals eat placenta?
1) animals do not go to the grocery store so the placenta is a form of food to sustain an animal while it recovers from childbirth.
2) also because of the whole not being able to buy groceries thing, the placenta boosts milk production until the recovering animal can hunt or graze again
3) and this one is important…birthing one’s young in the wild leaves the animal susceptible to attack, and a big pile of bloody placenta in the middle of your den or hiding place is a beacon for any creature with sharper teeth then you and wants a little dinner….and since you’re all into being a wild animal and don’t know how to bag and dispose of all that bloody tissue in a landfill or something, YOU EAT IT!
Crap…I never went to college and I could think of 3 reasons there NOT to eat my placenta.
The mammal mother also eats it to replenish all the vitamins and nutrients its body has used up in the pregnancy. They usually don’t have regular access to prenatal vitamens, doctor visits, and a mom-to-be blogs out in the wild.
By the way, if you’re looking to get people interested in eating part of themselves. Maybe you could have gone with a less terrifying illustration. Perhaps one that doesn’t have a baby split open next to the nastiness you’re trying to convince people to choke down?
Times like this I can’t help but mourn the loss of Ronco. I can just see it now…
The Placent-o-Matic!
You can slide, dice, saute, braise, boil, bake, roast, or fricasse with just one push of a button!
With the optional crafting attachment, you can
* Make ink prints for the grandparents with the decorative paints and glitter!
* Carve it up and preserve the lovely lumps to send as thank-yous for all the gifts you receved! (Preservative included)
* Make a teddy bear, frog, clown doll, or troll doll, preserve, and save for the chlid’s first toy!
“The placenta is sacred”? As someone who has had one plop of her body and who will have another plop out in several months, I can say that I firmly believe there is nothing sacred about it. It’s medical waste.
If I’m not incorrect, foreskins are used for making skin grafts for burn victims, and cord blood is stored in case your bouncing baby develops some sort of blood or genetic disorder (and I think they’re doing something with the stem cells in there). So, not exactly medical waste.
Having said that, your average doctor has to go to school for absolute ages – I think he/she knows what is and is not medical waste.
I believe it. The closest a placenta is ever getting to my face is when my doctor said, “Do you want to see the placenta?” and held it up. You know, I’m there getting my vulva stitched back up, and this woman is dangling placenta in my face. Needless to say, I don’t eat it, and I don’t smear it on my face.
I think it can be sacred without you needing to eat it. You can lovingly and respectfully put it in a biohazard bag. Or bury it under a tree. Or whatever.
I guess you can even eat it, if you’re bound and determined, but dear God, don’t pay someone fifty bucks to advise you on it. There’s plenty of information free on the Internet.
I’ve never watched “19 and Counting,” so I don’t know the answer to this question: Has this subject ever been raised? If so, do the kids clamor for more of that great placenta casserole that only mama makes?
For the record, I don’t have a problem with people eating placentas. It’s not something that I would personally eat by choice (kind of like pickles), but I’m not going to condemn anyone else for choosing to do this.
What I do have a problem with is people justifying it by saying “other mammals do it!” Yes, yes they do. But my dog also eats her own poo and vomit, which makes me question the wisdom of looking to animals for culinary recommendations.
I have no problem writing off people who eat their own placentas as being batshit. It isn’t just a food choice. They may not be poisonous, but they AREN’T FOOD FOR THE NORMAL HUMAN BEING.
I don’t know if it’s quite along the same lines as pickles, but I’m mostly with you. And I’m not going to condemn people who (quietly) eat placentas. It’s the people running around going “OMG! Placentas are ~*magikal*~ and anyone who doesn’t eat/make art with/carry around their placenta is stupid and evil and wants to destroy the world!”
Those people I condemn. And I may or may not throw poo at them. But that’s cool, because a lot of mammals throw pool.
It is an interesting point. Cannibalism is actually dangerous to your health (personally that’s my top reason for eating people). The placenta is the same species as you, making it cannibalism – in fact, while it’s not genetically identical to your own tissue, it is genetically part of your own offspring, making it very close to your own DNA. I’ve never heard about health risks with eating placentas, but isn’t it unhealthy to eat things that are related to you?
I don’t see how genetics would make any difference. It’s not like the genetic material is somehow incorporated back into your body – you’re digesting it (breaking it down).
That doesn’t make it any less psychologically disturbing, mind you.
Actually, IIRC, things that are genetically close to you are actually easier for your body to break down. But you gotta know they’re healthy first. Because things that are related to you can carry diseases that you are susceptible to. (And other than mad cow disease, you’re less likely to catch things from cows.) But if it’s YOUR placenta, probably you don’t have to worry about that.
The moral? Don’t go around stealing other people’s placentas in the hope of being able to eat their soul. You may get their diseases.
I look back fondly to the days where no one served placenta pot pie to their family. And the weirdest thing you ever heard of people eating was when Granny Clampet was screaming for people to sit down at “the fancy eatin’ table”
Um…the placenta filters out toxins from mother to baby. I would imagine eating a placenta would be much like consuming your dirty air or water filter. Gross. *hurk*
“The placenta is an incredibly vascular tissue and contains a substantial amount of blood. Serious illnesses such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be contracted through exposure to placental tissue if the woman happens to be infected. Simply handling the placenta is sufficient to spread disease; eating it certainly poses risks as well (and, no, thoroughly cooking the placenta doesn’t necessarily make it safe to eat).”
There are many absurd claims in this advertisement. Allow me to share my attempt at quantifying them:
1. They teach this shit in college, yo.
2. Expelled organs are sacred; thus worthy of honor and reverence.
3. One can (and should!) honor a sacred item by eating it.
4. Honoring one’s expelled organs requires expert advice.
5. $50 is a reasonable fee for a perfect recipe for placenta cacciatore.
Awww. I’m a Christian. There aren’t any sacred objects left for me to eat. Except maybe crucifixes. Do you think the local Cathedral would get mad if I broke in and started cooking their statue of Mary or Jesus?
I love that one of the “related posts you may be interested in” that were listed when I first looked at this (prior to commenting, which then provided me with new suggestions) was something beginning with “Tom Tom.” Oh, Mr. Cruise.
Yeah, I saw parents take a bite out of a placenta right after delivery during my ob rotation in nursing school. I about effing fell over. They had blood on ther faces and it was freaky! No one saw it coming either, they asked to look at it and then they both took a bite.
Kudos to the seller for using an illustration that actually looks EVEN GROSSER THAN THE CONCEPT ITSELF. It’s like they said, “HOW can we make eating a discarded human tissue chunk any grosser? I know- add it splorging its way out of a dissected baby!”
Ick. (Also, it’s interesting to me that hippies are now finding it trendy to consider placenta sacred- but, typically, not full-grown fetuses… :S worship the sack, kill the baby… Society is doomed.)
Do your baby (and others)a favor-donate the cord to a cord bank. Not only can it be useful in the future if your child develops a blood-related disease, but the stem cells in it can be used to help perfect treatment for patients with Huntington’s Chorea and Alzheimers. You get a cute kid, and a chance to help humanity. Win/win.
So, turns out there is sound evidence for ingesting placenta. I am a crazy, non- hippy hippy. That means I am thoroughly educated, groomed, got me some mad social skills, love mid century furniture….you get the picture. BUT I opted for home birth, cloth diapers and every other green, crunchy, parenting option. Except placenta ingestion. Too much for a faux hippy, wife of a chiropractor/naturopath, breastfeeding, non circumcising me. But now If you promised me that eating a piece of every single piece of every Regretsy fan’s poop would guarantee me an easier time of things or more sleep I would gladly get my fork and knife ready. So. If there is a next time, I will be shoving my way to the front of the line to get my placenta into my gullet. But luckily I live in Portland, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a placenta encapsulator. No need for Etsy. Besides, many people eat shit that is just as hideous while fine dining or eating indigenous peasant food. All of it nasty.
Evidence that it gives you some benefit that you can’t get by eating something that wasn’t expelled from your body? I seriously doubt it. I also would wager that cooking it kills most of the alleged benefits…and eating it raw probably poses other hazards.
“But now If you promised me that eating a piece of every single piece of every Regretsy fan’s poop would guarantee me an easier time of things or more sleep I would gladly get my fork and knife ready.”
So all you need to do something objectionable is a promise from some stranger on the Internet that it will give you “an easier time of things”? See, there’s your problem right there…
My pal Eddie Lin of “Deep End Dining” fame ate his wife’s placenta. Well, his KID’s placenta. It came OUT of his wife. Probably one of the more mundane things’s he has swallowed, really. He said placenta was really a versatile item. Here’s another intersting item he swallowed, the infamous balut! http://www.deependdining.com/2005/09/balut-egg-of-darkness-pinoy-pinay.html
OK, I see that.
“Ma’am, is that YOUR plascenta? You’ll have to pack it in your luggage or leave it here-no unwrapped food items are allowed through security.”
I suppose it ranks with the people who believe that drinking your own pee is good for overall health. I mean “rank” in every way possible. These people can’t buy fish without consu
lting that little list they carry around.
Then again, notice people seem to line up every Sunday to get the chance to eat OTHER animal’s plascenta and unborn children. Why eat that of a stranger when your own is so familiar?
Um. I think you pretty much pegged it. I believe it was Freud who said the most ‘familiar’ things are the source of the most uncanny–that is assuming one CAN be on familiar terms with human placenta as opposed to animal placenta, and even then, that is assuming there are more people lining up to eat other mammal placenta than human placenta. Which I doubt.
All that shit aside, the dude ate A PIECE OF HIS WIFE. Christ. How is that “mundane” compared to what is essentially a boiled duck egg?
wait, what? who is eating other people’s placenta’s and children? and why on sunday? are you making some communion reference? i was with you til the last paragraph.
Actually, it’s been taken to court. If iit comes out of you in a hospital or dr’s office or medical lab, it belongs to said hospital or research lab. Which is why it’s legal for a researcher to patent a gene that came out of your blood sample and they don’t owe you a thing if they make big bucks off it. Or why they can refuse to give you your placenta if you give birth in a hospital.
How about if all of these assholes want to be so fucking natural, they forego any drugs or C-sections?
Read the following article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-07-18-placenta-ingestion_N.htm
Gotta love the moron who actually took the hospital to court. Modern medicine is okay for her when the labor is in trouble, but damn those crazy modern quacks when they tell her they can’t legally give her the bio-hazardous material so she can FUCKING EAT IT.
This is so disgusting I can’t even put it into words. I’m going to go get drunk now.
i got mad at my dentist when i was little because she wouldn’t let me keep my tooth to show my friends. she said she’d write me a note for the tooth fairy if that’s what i was worried about. I glared at her and said “this is my last babytooth, do you think i haven’t seen mum putting the money in the jar?”
my parents refused to force the dentist to give me back my tooth. i was so angry.
*headdesk* Yes, eating your dried placenta in little gelatin tablets is going to help your postpartum depression. Oh my aching ovaries, has NO ONE heard of the placebo effect in placenta-land?
My dog used to eat its own shit, should we do that too? I’m so glad I’m done having kids and I can just get on with looking down my nose at the people who breast feed their 2 year old and don’t immunize them.
i dont care whether you breastfeed your baby until it goes to school, really. i’d probably feel uncomfortble watching it, but in your own time, whatever.
I’ll play devil’s advocate a little bit, and say that I can understand why people like the seller think that placentas are sacred. Without it, there would far more likely than not be be no (live) baby. It outlives its usefulness after the baby is born, though, and I don’t think eating it is a great idea. Charging $50 to recommend placenta recipes is pretentious when anyone can find good recipes and advice for free elsewhere online.
When I was a kid and witnessed a foal’s birth for the first time noone warned me that mares eat the placenta. I thought the grossest part would be seeing the baby exit the vag. Boy was I wrong. The things you learn on the farm.
What in the fucking wide wide world of sports make people want to do this? It’s as if these whackjobs are deifying all our bodily functions. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, go out in a field, squat, push that baby out, chew off the umbilical, gnaw on the steaming, raw placenta and bark at the moon, but for the love of pete, keep it to yourself! Now, ‘scuse me while I go barf.
I really don’t know what to say about this, except that it’s definitely gross gross gross. I mean, seriously? If you eat the placenta, are you going to be the same type of person who saves all your kids’ baby teeth and every bit of hair from every haircut they’ve ever had?
I hope these people eat their vomit much like my dogs always have, and my cats too. “Ohh, look! I just love it when partially masticated and digested kibble and grass get all mushy like this, it’s a fucking delicacy you know.”
Yes, it was me. I want this! I any of you fat jealous losers buy this, so help me, I’ll…………….flounce. Or something. Unless you buy it for me. That would be fine.
If we can momentarily forget that this is something that has been stewing inside you for the past 40 weeks, in fluid that includes the fetus’ excretions, I still can’t imagine stomaching the texture. It has got to be like eating the chewy-veiny part of liver. Seriously, I’d have to fast for a month before I was so ravenous that I’d consider chewing it.
However, I do imagine it’d be a great diet to lose the baby weight: you can’t eat anything until you eat that placenta!
Wild animals do not snack on poop and placenta because it’s deeply spiritual and meaningful to them. They do it to clean up, so as not to attract predators to their tasty, tasty newborns.
You know, I like haggis, liver, chorizo, and I’ll prepare my own meat to an extent. I can butcher a whole chicken. I’m not particularly squeamish about organs, or about eating them.
That said, I equate this (like others recently) to 2 girls, one cup. This is NOT FOOD. It is bodily waste *left over* from a life-sustaining process. It’s like faecal matter, urine, or menstrual excretia. The end process and offal of a bodily function. Eating it is a practice that probably won’t kill you if you do it once or twice, but it’s certainly not wise, healthy, or logical. Or sane. Let’s not forget sane.
“The word placenta comes from the Greek word for ‘cake’”
Oh my God! These poor souls are confused! Someone needs to let them know they are eating at the discharge of their FUCKING VAGINAL WALL, and not some delicious baked treat!
I read somewhere that the reason mother dogs eat their babies’ shit is so that the smell doesn’t alert predators to the tasty, defenseless babies lying around.
So that would make sense, as far as their eating the placenta goes.
But Etsy mothers don’t have that problem. Even if a predator was dumb enough to want to ingest that much cake pop and bitchtardery, they’d have to fight through the endless ring of ass-kissing yesmen in their knitting circle, and I don’t know of any shark, grizzly, or lioness who would be willing to spend hours licking that stench off themselves for two bites of baby.
mustachioed_bajingo_buttons
August 9, 2011 at 3:25 am
I’ll be the first to admit I had a moment of kale-loving hippyness & saved the placenta from my two latest rugrats to bury under a tree. But by the time I got home from the hospital…that stuff was stinky (& yes, they’d put it in the fridge for me). No way would I be putting it in, on or near my mouth. But the tree loved it.
August 7, 2011 at 4:32 pm
That placenta looks fucking delicious. *hurk*
August 7, 2011 at 5:37 pm
August 8, 2011 at 12:13 am
August 8, 2011 at 9:46 am
*faint*
August 23, 2011 at 10:37 am
“Placenta/bloodstains easily covered by your favorite linens”
August 7, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Is there some sort of vegetarian version of this?
August 7, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Tofuenta; all the taste, all the texture, none of the cannibalism.
August 7, 2011 at 4:35 pm
My parents were “friends” (read, he was their pot dealer) that was a super strict vegetarian. He and his wife made a chili out of their first born’s placenta. When my dad said, “WTF??” His explanation was, “It’s the only meat one can consume without killing something.”
Dad, “Please don’t ever invite us over for dinner, thanks.”
August 7, 2011 at 4:42 pm
And apparently the story still freaks me out so much that I can’t form complete sentences…
August 7, 2011 at 4:52 pm
“It’s the only meat one can consume without killing something.”
I disagree. That kills my appetite.
August 7, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Mine too. WHY WHY WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS?!
August 25, 2011 at 11:14 pm
I told them to put my polycycstic kidney in a doggy bag, but they assumed it was the nitrous oxide talking.
August 7, 2011 at 7:09 pm
Urk. It isn’t even meat, except perhaps in the sense of “organ meat.” Meat is muscle, and the placenta doesn’t include muscle tissue. It’s mostly vascular and connective.
August 7, 2011 at 8:20 pm
It sure isn’t dairy.
August 7, 2011 at 9:30 pm
does that mean tripe and brains aren’t meat?
August 8, 2011 at 12:16 am
McDonald’s chicken nuggets are mostly vascular and connective tissue too.
August 8, 2011 at 12:17 am
Yes – they’re not meat, they’re offal. And the only right place for offal is in a haggis.
Placenta haggis, anyone?
August 8, 2011 at 5:44 am
Aww man, don’t ruin haggis for me.
August 8, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Did you say…Organ Meat?
.
Yesssss.
August 7, 2011 at 10:04 pm
I think I’ve been desensitized to gross stuff on the internet, because the thought this story gave me was, “I should start that chili in the crock pot tonight; then it will be super delicious by lunch time.”
I hasten to add that I am making my chili with ground beef, not placenta.
August 8, 2011 at 10:36 am
“It’s the only meat one can consume without killing something.”
Roadkill (hey, it was an accident)
Amputations
Stillbirths
Tumors
August 8, 2011 at 6:22 pm
And Goiters.
August 8, 2011 at 10:33 pm
You could just stalk the animal until it dies.
Also, what’re they going to protest once people figure out how to grow beef in a lab?
August 9, 2011 at 10:06 am
Tastes like despair.
August 9, 2011 at 3:45 pm
A friend of mine in college suggested growing tumors as a source of meat. She changed her mind when I started describing how the interior of a large tumor can quickly become necrotic…
August 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm
I believe it comes with a side of kale
August 7, 2011 at 6:12 pm
I’ll have the kale, please. Hold the placenta.
August 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Well, the people that promote this have the brains of a cucumber… so, yes.
August 8, 2011 at 6:18 am
Honestly, I was never more glad that I am one.
August 7, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Well fuck me, there go my dinner plans…
August 7, 2011 at 4:56 pm
Yeah. I decided to eat dinner at my computer tonight. A nice medium rare steak. Then thought it would be a good plan to visit Regretsy while biting into a delicious, particularly juicy piece.
There’s some math for ya!
August 7, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Why oh why would you think it was a good idea to read Regretsy while eating?
August 7, 2011 at 5:56 pm
we all had to learn somehow.
August 7, 2011 at 6:31 pm
It takes a lot more than that to put me off my appetite. I’m still eating my yummy artichoke pasta salad (with chunks of tomato).
August 7, 2011 at 10:46 pm
I have the stomach of steel. I was googling pictures of conjoined twins while eating at one point. weeeeee.
August 8, 2011 at 12:41 am
I ate chocolate soft serve after Two Girls One Cup! (we’re having a stomach strength competition, right?)
August 8, 2011 at 11:19 am
I don’t know what I was thinking. I sure as hell didn’t waste the steak though! It was too delicious.
August 9, 2011 at 12:44 am
My 8th grade homeroom teacher decided to tell us exactly what hot dogs were made of…while we were in the cafeteria eating hot dogs. I think I was the only one who kept eating.
August 7, 2011 at 7:27 pm
You know how Bones starts with the particularly gross scenes? The day I sat down with mac and cheese to watch a particularly maggoty episode was probably the worst pairing ever.
August 8, 2011 at 6:28 am
“Maggots, Michael. You’re eating maggots.”
August 7, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Vom.
August 7, 2011 at 5:11 pm
That about sums it up. But if you don’t want to cook it in pasta – here’s something else…
http://www.etsy.com/listing/76950803/diy-placenta-encapsulation-kit?ref=sr_gallery_11&ga_search_submit=&ga_search_query=placenta&ga_order=date_desc&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet=
August 7, 2011 at 8:07 pm
omg, omg, omg! My favorite show is Bones. I can stand to watch some pretty nasty stuff, but this just about threw me over the edge!
August 7, 2011 at 9:24 pm
From the same seller:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/48004362/nettle-urtica-dioica-tincture-organic?ref=v1_other_1
This one you can use multipurpose!
August 7, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Why are nettles girls?
August 8, 2011 at 1:31 am
nettles are girls because they sting & make decent tea?
August 7, 2011 at 4:33 pm
I do hope there’s a crock pot recipe.
August 7, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Well, apparently the crockpot cooks it too slow, according to a doula site I just found. It’s already been cooking for 9 months, dontchaknow.
August 7, 2011 at 8:24 pm
Then I’ll settle for Placenta Lasagna
August 7, 2011 at 10:47 pm
Placenta with polenta?
August 7, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Sing-a long!
Yummy, yummy, yummy
I got love in my tummy
and I feel like placent’in you
love you’re such a sweet thing
good enough to eat thing
And that’s just what I’m gonna goo
Ooh love to catch ya
Ooh love to hold ya
Ooh I love it so!
August 8, 2011 at 2:08 pm
There’s also people that dehydrate it and make placenta jerky. You’re welcome for that thought by the way.
August 7, 2011 at 4:34 pm
For the love of all things holy…what the fuck is this?
For the love of all things holy…what the fuck is this?
August 7, 2011 at 5:40 pm
It looks very evil indeed, like the lure of a gateway drug. You may think you’ll only do placenta, but according to the diagram, you’ll end up consuming the baby too.
August 7, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Raw Diet: You’re doing it wrong.
August 7, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Eating: You’re doing it wrong.
August 7, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Life: you’re doing it wrong.
August 7, 2011 at 9:25 pm
Sane: you’re doing it wrong.
August 8, 2011 at 2:54 am
Nausea: you’ve got that bit right.
August 8, 2011 at 5:25 am
Medical waste: you’re doing it wrong.
August 7, 2011 at 4:35 pm
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
August 7, 2011 at 4:35 pm
What if I accidentally cook the baby instead?
August 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
freshly barbequed baby is a wonderful healthy snack, especially the crispy skin and tender tender tender meat…. nom
August 7, 2011 at 5:16 pm
I want my baby back, baby back, ribs…
August 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm
You’ll solve all the world’s problems, according to Jonathan Swift.
August 7, 2011 at 4:55 pm
That’s why you need the seller’s help!
August 7, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Raise the placenta and hope no one notices?
August 7, 2011 at 7:01 pm
best comment all day.
August 8, 2011 at 2:43 am
I love babies, I just can’t eat a whole one for breakfast!
August 14, 2011 at 10:44 pm
You get LOTS of leftovers to serve many different ways. Kind of like a Thanksgiving turkeky.
August 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Meanwhile, a Google search and crazy mom forums are free. You save $50!!!!!
August 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm
“I was fascinated and often wondered why most mammals ingest their placenta, and other mammals, such as humans, do not.”
Because it looks line a smashed asshole.
Mystery solved.
August 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Humans don’t eat placenta because (among so many obvious reasons) we don’t have to hide our scent from predators hiding in the bushes!
August 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
^This^
Not to mention when the new (Human) mother needs a boost of vitamins and energy after just giving birth, they can just yell out and get whatever they need as as much as they need. Other placenta-eating mammals don’t. So they eat the placenta.
August 7, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Would you please explain this to The U.S. Army? They made maternity camo uniforms. When is a pregnant woman going to be hiding in the woods? Is this the appropriate dinner attire for placenta eating?
August 7, 2011 at 5:58 pm
It is if you don’t want people seeing you eating your placenta in the woods.
August 7, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Not only that, but isn’t the whole point of the placenta to filter out toxins that might pass to the baby? Eating something that’s been marinading in 9 months worth of toxic shit doesn’t really sound “sacred” or “life sustaining”.
August 7, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Natural selection seems to have filtered out those that are the placenta…
August 8, 2011 at 12:23 am
Someone else said this the last time we had a placentaphagia post.
I don’t believe this is true. The placenta filters the toxins and passes them into the mother’s blood, which takes them to her kidneys and she pees them out along with her own toxins. It doesn’t just soak them up like a sponge and hold onto them.
That doesn’t make placenta-eating less gross, I just wanted to be accurate. There’s a lot of misconceptions about how the body handles toxins. They don’t hang around, they come out with your pee. The only way to really detox is to drink more.
August 8, 2011 at 12:42 am
I still wouldn’t want to eat a human liver.
August 8, 2011 at 1:34 am
Drink more to detox? Bring on the cleansing!
August 8, 2011 at 1:38 am
@ tehcaspia – Speak for yourself! I’ve always got predators hiding in my bushes.
August 8, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Chris Hansen?
August 7, 2011 at 5:17 pm
I found out a little while ago that some mammals, such as dogs, will lick their offsprings’ little bums to induce bowel movements. I really hope to never see that bit of mammal-rearing-advice catching on.
Or other wonderful tidbits, like eating your own children if disturbed.
August 7, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Most mammals, in fact. I’m a hedgehog rehabilitator and although I haven’t had to deal with orphaned babies myself, I have several books that describe how to stimulate little hoglets to urinate and defecate with a damp q-tip.
If you don’t, they literally can’t go, and they’ll actually die fairly quickly.
I can imagine it must be a lot of fun. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t come out and get drunk with you. I have to stay at home and rub the arses and naughty bits of some baby hedgehogs with a cotton bud.”
August 7, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Just make it fun silverleaf79. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9dfrwX8TkY
August 7, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Honestly, I think that’s a GREAT reason to get drunk.
August 7, 2011 at 8:27 pm
You have to do the same thing with orphaned puppies, use a damp cloth to stimulate defecating and urinating. That’s why its easier to find a mom with pups that will take them.
August 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm
I’ve had to do that with a pair of kittens a mama abandoned under my porch. That was NOT fun times.
August 7, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Saffy, that was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
August 7, 2011 at 11:48 pm
but i bet there’s a special place in heaven at the right hand side of god for those who rehabilitate baby hedgehogs.
August 7, 2011 at 6:17 pm
I almost want to suggest the butt licking to the seller. I bet if I worded it as pretentiously as this listing I could convince her it’s a good idea. The problem is that I think I could convince her it’s a good idea.
August 7, 2011 at 7:04 pm
do it. record it. report back to us for grading.
August 8, 2011 at 1:36 am
Do it, Cindy-Lou!
August 14, 2011 at 10:42 pm
If she pays you for the advice I don’t see the problem.
August 7, 2011 at 6:17 pm
There have been days when I wanted to eat my young!
August 7, 2011 at 6:00 pm
We could make a long list of things we do differently from other mammals. It’s not a bad thing. While the animal world outside of homo sapiens is a wondrous thing, I still say vive la difference.
August 8, 2011 at 5:30 am
I’m glad people are open about eating their placentas. It makes it easier for me to weed out the fucktards.
August 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm
It’s official, you can sell ANYTHING on Etsy.
August 7, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Well, you can put anything up for sale on etsy…
August 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm
The original “Do It Yourself” project. Eve crafted the first one, but I don’t think she ate it.
August 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Never eating fucking pasta again. Not for a while, at least.
August 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
This post really needs to link back to the whole ‘do art with your placenta’ thing. They’re slightly related with the whole “can I eat it after I do art with it?” question.
August 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
thanks i just had chicken parm for dinner an hour ago X_X
August 7, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Ugh… I just ate eggplant parm… I feel your pain
August 7, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Even if it WASN’T a placenta we were talking about, why would you pay someone fifty dollars to tell you how to eat something? What is the discussion that needs to take place there? Here, I’ll do it: “Dip it in batter and call it a corn dog”. Fifty dollars, please.
August 7, 2011 at 6:26 pm
doesn’t it need a stick? everything tastes better on a stick.
August 7, 2011 at 7:44 pm
The cord gets really stiff when it’s deep fried.
August 7, 2011 at 9:33 pm
edible stick! even better.
August 7, 2011 at 4:39 pm
The day “Top Chef” has a placenta quick-fire challenge is the day I never watch again. And possibly bitch-slap Tom Colicchio.
August 7, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Are you kidding? I would START watching it they did that! That would be priceless entertainment!
August 8, 2011 at 1:40 am
oh, totally.
August 7, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Has anyone checked whether it’s been on the original Iron Chef? They had some crazy shit on that show.
August 7, 2011 at 6:27 pm
now that is a question!
August 7, 2011 at 11:55 pm
I just checked, and alas there does not seem to have been a Battle Placenta.
I’m simultaneously surprised, disappointed, and just a bit relieved. I do, however, now know what suggestion to make with regards to my cousin’s baby shower theme.
August 7, 2011 at 4:39 pm
This placenta eating thing is so filthy. I want to vomit harder each time I’m reminded of it.
August 7, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Skip the placenta. Go for the meatier bit: eat the baby.
August 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
this is why i hang outside abortion clinics.
August 7, 2011 at 8:32 pm
Hah! Greenlinda, I can’t believe you have -25 for this. That’s the funniest thing I’ve read yet on this thread.
August 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm
If you make delicious fetus soup out of them (as all pro-choice people do), you could use these to make crackers to go with it.
August 7, 2011 at 9:28 pm
My roommate collects cookie cutters, and every time I see those I am SO TEMPTED, but as this is her house, I dare not push my luck. I like my happy home.
Maybe someday when we part ways I will get her one.
August 7, 2011 at 4:40 pm
*hork*
Oh god.
August 7, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Also, I think other animals eat their placentas so that predators don’t smell the newborn baby juice and think “mmm, easy pickins”
August 7, 2011 at 7:18 pm
Also because it provides them with nutrients that allow them to nurse their young, since it will probably be a while before they can leave the babies alone and go hunting for real food.
Human’s don’t need to do that, because we have bottles and supermarkets, and aren’t faced with having to spend the first week of their life constantly feeding our babies.
August 8, 2011 at 12:28 am
Show me the mother, breastfeeding or not, who could make it to the supermarket during the first week!
Your point is still valid, though, as we generally have other people around who can go to the supermarket for us.
August 8, 2011 at 6:01 am
We also have these wonderful things called “refrigerators.” Getting food is just a room away.
August 8, 2011 at 10:44 am
” . . . aren’t faced with having to spend the first week of their life constantly feeding our babies.”
As a breastfeeding mom, I beg to differ. And it’s more like the first MONTH.
August 8, 2011 at 1:11 pm
I dunno about the first week, but I certainly recall walking through Target while nursing my son. I did have the courtesy to cover with a nursing apron; not every man, woman and child needed to gaze upon my areola. I did the hearts-and-flowers rocking and cooing nursing — but when shit had to get done, the baby came too. He got fed, and I got shit done. Win win.
August 8, 2011 at 1:28 pm
^Wish I could have done that . . . unfortunately, the football hold (baby on the side) was the ONLY one that was manageable with my, um, ample breasts. So not only did I have to sit down the ENTIRE time I was nursing, it had to be on a couch with pillows. My newborn daughter nursed for 45 minutes per session, 10-12 times a day. Do the math . . . it was literally a full-time job!
August 7, 2011 at 4:41 pm
Oh no we won’t!
August 7, 2011 at 4:42 pm
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
August 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
because if there’s any vomiting involved in this…and believe me, there is, it isn’t “a bit” and it isn’t in the mouth.
More like a tumultuous torrent all over the fucking place.
..or maybe that’s just me.
August 7, 2011 at 6:02 pm
This is just me, but I haven’t had a good puke since the age of 13. It is always a little bit, in my mouth, and always at inapproriate times. Like watching cat videos on YouTube or something.
August 8, 2011 at 1:16 pm
I didn’t puke from anything other than being drunk for a long, long time. Every once in a while I’d catch a virus that made me so nauseous that I wanted to puke, but no actual puke. Only except was wicked vertigo a couple years ago – I had the spins so bad I felt constantly drunk, and was puking like a spigot into a bucket in the ER. The bucket too much like a KFC bucket for me NOT to wipe my chin, turn to my husband and say, “that’s finger-lickin’ good.”
August 7, 2011 at 6:03 pm
But I saw a doctor about it! He gave me pills
August 7, 2011 at 6:30 pm
heh, when i went to the doctor for that she tested me for pregnancy, told me i wasn’t, then prescibed me nexium. 3 months later i find out that i had been preggers the whole time.
August 7, 2011 at 9:12 pm
August 7, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Oh my god this picture broke my heart. I didn’t even know I had one.
August 8, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Aww, don’t be sad. It looks like he’s actually eating some oatmeal out of a green bowl.
August 7, 2011 at 4:43 pm
I wouldn’t pay someone to tell me how to cook part of myself (my kid?) and eat it.
Mostly because I’m vegetarian, partially because I would rather use it in art, and partially because I’m 16 and have no wish for the pitter-patter of tiny, screaming feet.
August 7, 2011 at 4:48 pm
You could probably still eat your placenta after you dip it in paint and press it all over your living room walls–if you wash it well first, of course.
August 7, 2011 at 5:01 pm
Hell, dip it in barbecue sauce instead of paint, do the artwork, and then eat your materials!
August 7, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Is it still vegetarian if it comes from your own body?
August 7, 2011 at 5:10 pm
If I eat my boogers am I not a vegan anymore?
August 7, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Are you still vegan if you eat the boogers of an animal?
Too far?
August 7, 2011 at 6:22 pm
No, you’d still be a vegan. Not one I’d want to kiss or shake hands with, but still…
August 7, 2011 at 6:28 pm
I was trying to reply to bethymania. @silverleaf79: oh god, no. Given the weird shit that some foodies eat (offal, testicles, haggis *gag*) I’m sure there’s some foodie out there who’d love to discuss with you the subtle differences in flavor of cow boogers vs. pig boogers.
August 7, 2011 at 7:08 pm
Someone around here said it would be ok since nothing had to die, but I don’t know all the vegan/vegetarian “rules” lol. My one friend who is vegetarian always ends up eating meat accidentally actually, I’ll have to ask her!
August 7, 2011 at 7:12 pm
It’s interesting, really, where do you draw the line?
I mean, if you had your finger accidentally torn off, is it okay to eat that? What about someone else’s finger, if they were okay with you chowing down on it?
No snark or criticism intended, I’m genuinely interested. Every single one of us has some kind of dietary restriction and I’m just wondering how far people would be prepared to go.
Mind you, I was always fascinated by those morality type questions, like “if you had to choose one, would you kill a disabled child or an old woman?” or “If you’re on a sinking boat with 9 other people and you have to throw one person off or you all die, who do you choose?” and the psychological reasons why we find some choices easy and some harder. I’m weird, I guess.
August 7, 2011 at 7:32 pm
The only meat my brother has intentionally eaten since he was 7 (24 years) was salmon from a salmon farm that had been hit by lightning.
August 7, 2011 at 9:31 pm
Cindy-Loo Hoohoo: don’t knock haggis. There is a farm near my parents’ place that makes a haggis out of various non-organ beef cuts and OH MY GOD I never thought I would be able to say I liked haggis. (It’s more in the spirit of the haggis recipe, than the law…)
August 8, 2011 at 12:45 am
What difference would it make if haggis was made with offal or lean meat? It doesn’t taste of offal anyway. It tastes of oatmeal, onions and lots of salt and pepper. I make a mushroom haggis which tastes exactly like the real thing.
I get fed up with people dissing haggis because it
s got offal in it. You don’t complain about the eyeballs in your hot dog, do you? No, because you can’t taste them. Out of sight, out of mind.
August 8, 2011 at 1:46 am
mmmmm, hot dog eyeballs.
August 8, 2011 at 2:22 pm
but are they googily?
August 7, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Shit, I would more likely shove it back up there before I’d eat it.
August 7, 2011 at 4:50 pm
I don’t think the screaming comes from the feet part. Of course, right now the screaming comes from my brain.
August 8, 2011 at 1:47 am
I liked the visual of screaming feet, tho. I’m sure there’s an adult video somewhere with that theme. I would look for it, but my nightmares are frightening enough as it is.
August 7, 2011 at 4:50 pm
“partially because I would rather use it in art”
Hmmm….you must be new here…
August 7, 2011 at 4:52 pm
I’m relatively new to commenting, but I remember the placenta art post. Kinda reminded me of the guy who made the cover of Metallica’s “Fuel” album.
I’m pretty sure I’ll stick to making jewelry, though.
August 7, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Ahh, okay. Placenta art is an awfully touchy topic around here. Didn’t want to see you get ripped to shreds.
August 8, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Didn’t they use cow semen for that cover?
August 8, 2011 at 10:19 pm
It was actually the artist’s blood and semen mixed. Not the greatest thing to think about, but I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like that up for sale!
August 7, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Oh you can do both. You must have missed this: http://www.regretsy.com/2011/07/15/placenta-of-attention/#comments
August 8, 2011 at 12:48 am
You’re right, the placenta part of your kid. Everything from the amniotic sac inwards is genetically part of the baby, not the mother.
Which pushes the gross-ometer up another few notches, I feel.
August 7, 2011 at 4:44 pm
you know what else mammals do that humans don’t? lick their kids’ assholes and abandon their defected baby to die in the forest.
yes, we are mammals…but there are MANY things that mammals do that humans don’t. let’s try to keep it that way…..
August 7, 2011 at 5:05 pm
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August 7, 2011 at 5:21 pm
I’m confused by your comment. Did you miss the part where she said “yes, we are mammals” ??
August 7, 2011 at 7:39 pm
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August 7, 2011 at 5:20 pm
And you know what humans do that other animals don’t? Try to educate one another about eating their placentas.
August 7, 2011 at 5:24 pm
animals also don’t diaper their young but I don’t see anyone rushing out to try that idea.
August 7, 2011 at 5:59 pm
Oh, you WISH they weren’t.
http://tinyurl.com/3vrzww6
August 7, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Oi ve. Really? I can understand the whole green thing, but just look at how many cloth diapers and diaper covers you can buy on Etsy, for example! A lot less awful.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20464264/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/t/diaper-free-babies-fad-swells-despite-critics/
Check this article out- at the end, it talks about a mom holding her daughter over a SINK in a PUBLIC RESTROOM. A SINK.
August 7, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Oh, there are people who do that. At the bookstore I work at I’ve seen materials on how to raise diaper-free kids. I can’t remember what it entails, though. Some people do it by basically raising their kid for the first couple years suspended over a toilet. Good times.
August 7, 2011 at 9:25 pm
I learned about it by proxy through a green mommy blog lady who was considering doing it, and yep, it’s basically just suspending your kid over a toilet to go, being prepared to clean up lots of messes, and learning to recognize when they have to go.
August 8, 2011 at 1:53 am
Wow. These people must have trouble recruiting babysitters.
August 8, 2011 at 8:26 am
Because nothing says ‘quality parenting’ like the chance of making everyone around you have to deal with your child’s bodily waste wherever you go!
August 7, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Somehow I don’t think the idea that anything fried is good applies here.
August 7, 2011 at 6:33 pm
what if it’s on a stick?
August 7, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Fifty bucks for this person to work with me to come up with the perfect way to prepare my placenta? Um, I just Googled “placenta recipes” for FREE. Take that, ETSY!
August 7, 2011 at 5:25 pm
uh oh this “google” thing you talk of obviously stole their idea. time to call 1-800-kopinandpastin
August 7, 2011 at 9:24 pm
August 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
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August 7, 2011 at 6:34 pm
oh ew ew ew
August 7, 2011 at 9:26 pm
dare I say…
tubgirl
That is all.
August 7, 2011 at 4:45 pm
We were just discussing placenta related topics in the forum. Other creepy things to do with your placenta include
A)Leaving it attached to the baby and carrying it around until it falls off naturally
B) Making a teddy bear out of it
August 7, 2011 at 4:47 pm
Oh my goodness…that’s really creepy. How does it stay “preserved?”
August 7, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Website says… “Placenta must be cut in half and rubbed with sea salt to cure it. After it is dried out, it is treated with an emulsifying mixture of tannin and egg yolk to make it soft and pliable. Then, you craft it into a teddy bear.” *hurk*
August 7, 2011 at 6:06 pm
And you know when the kid is old enough to climb up on a chair, you’re going to find him running around the house with that disgusting teddy bear.
August 7, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Wonder how Teddy Roosevelt would feel about his name having been lent to THIS. Yowza.
August 7, 2011 at 6:31 pm
@inmediasres: I think this proves there’s no afterlife. If there was, Teddy Roosevelt would have gotten vengeance from beyond the grave for this. I’d like to think he would, anyway.
August 7, 2011 at 6:36 pm
so… placenta leather? wonder what a handbag would look like. or a baby bag!!!
oh… i made myself say ew.
August 8, 2011 at 3:20 pm
@special-me: Pleather?
August 7, 2011 at 4:50 pm
I will never understand the “falling off naturally” thing. I mean, ewww. And I simply refuse to understand that the bear is made of human placenta leather.
August 7, 2011 at 7:30 pm
I was reading about the ‘letting the cord fall off naturally thing’ somewhere the other day (the site referred to it as ‘Lotus Birth,’ though what it had to do with lotuses is beyond me), and most doctor’s consider it a dangerous practice. Once the placenta is delivered, it’s basically dead, as is the cord. Which means there’s no circulation in the cord, the blood stagnates, and it can result in the baby developing a potentially life-threatening case of septicemia.
Plus, of course, you have to haul the whole thing around with you for however long it takes the cord to drop off naturally.And it smells to high heaven.
People justify it by saying “Well, pioneer women did it,’ conveniently forgetting that the infant mortality rate back then was sky high,. Hell, even into the 1920s, my grandmother had 11 children, and only seven of them survived to grow to adulthood.
August 8, 2011 at 8:27 am
‘Pioneer women did it’
So what’s the next trend — dying of dysentery?
August 8, 2011 at 10:35 am
@TooManyCookbooks
Well dysentery or drowning when your oxen ford the river. Darn oxen. That’s what always got me.
August 8, 2011 at 5:58 pm
I’m pretty sure pioneer women cut the cord. With a Bowie knife, or a hatvhet or something, but they did cut it. Or tie it off.
August 7, 2011 at 4:51 pm
*leans over* You gonna eat that?
August 7, 2011 at 4:58 pm
for whatever reason, I never got that attached to the placentas. My babies, yes. Placentas.. I was able to let go when their job was done.
August 7, 2011 at 6:37 pm
I am so glad I was out cold when I had my c-section, had I gotten to know my placenta I would have likely wanted to name it…make a tree print with it, use it for crafting material and ingest it in a warm embrace of all its life giving properties….its probably a good thing that I never saw it after delivery.
I wonder where it is today….is it happy…..is it a bear….did some stranger worship it as I should have or if it was abandoned and unloved.
All I took home was a baby boy.
August 7, 2011 at 9:38 pm
looks like you remembered the important bit, then
August 7, 2011 at 6:37 pm
i never even saw mine. cesearean for the win.
August 8, 2011 at 1:01 am
The thing is, if you look upon it as an object of scientific interest, it’s not disgusting. The midwife showed me mine – I don’t recall asking her to, but I did think it was very interesting. A bit like a tree.
But that intellectual curiousity would have been sadly curtailed if anyone suggested I EAT THE THING.
August 7, 2011 at 5:01 pm
It’s like Rule 34 but for placenta and a lot more horrifying. If you can think of it, someone has done it, with a placenta.
August 7, 2011 at 5:26 pm
It’s like Leatherface’s baby toy
August 7, 2011 at 5:30 pm
See, I went to read the comments on the Placentabear and there were a lot of level-headed replies – some people being weirded out, some people trying to make a case for it – but then I got to this:
And what if this teddy bear was made for a mom who’s baby was born not alive? The mom might treasure it.
HUAAAAAAAAARRRRGH I have to take all of the showers in the WORLD
August 7, 2011 at 6:11 pm
If a mother takes comfort in crafting a teddybear from a stillborn placenta… I think she needs a lot more than teddy – perhaps a psychologist. I really feel for women who lose their babies, but it sure seems more beneficial to get some help if you’re having trouble coping rather than making a bear out of your dead child’s placenta.
August 7, 2011 at 8:19 pm
I’m not even exaggerating, my skin crawled when I tried to imagine it. There aren’t many things that get to me, but great googly moogly, stillborn baby toys would be one of them…
I’m all for coping in your own way. Some people take a year; some people take a month. However, ‘coping’ and ‘unhealthy fixation’ are two entirely different things.
August 8, 2011 at 1:17 am
In fairness I can’t imagine anyone getting over a stillbirth in a month. I imagine a year is a more realistic lower threshold – and it’s the kind of thing you’d still be thinking about decades later.
August 7, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Ugh. If a woman is going to treasure a teddy made out of her stillborn baby’s placenta, what’s the next step? Taxidermy-ing the actual child?
Ugh.
Oh, and for good measure? Ugh.
August 8, 2011 at 2:02 am
AbbyCat, if I ever have a stillborn baby, I will have the kid taxidermied and totally credit you with the brilliant plan.
August 7, 2011 at 6:20 pm
I am getting a huge chuckle from “lotus birth”
On the one hand we have someone proposing you eat the placenta because animals do it in nature…..not realizing that there are very good reasons animals do so, ie: predators, needing something to eat while recovering, etc…things humans don’t need to worry about.
And with “lotus birth” you have the opposite, leaving a useless spent organ hanging from your baby with the danger of it becoming “malodorous” contrary to nature’s example which has every creature in it chewing through the cord and getting rid of the placenta.
And both practices being a result of hippie bullshit and having ZERO benefit.
August 7, 2011 at 6:39 pm
maybe you should suggest to the nature-wombyn (in a superior tone of voice) that if they were truly doing as nature intended they or their husband would gnaw it off.
mammals do it, so we must!
August 7, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Proud daughter of hippies checking in here.
And by “checking in”, I mean I’m still alive because even my hippie parents had the sense to cut the fucking cord. Hell, mine were even of the “let’s go to the hospital for this event” school.
August 8, 2011 at 10:11 am
No, I have to disagree. If you eat your placenta, you’re getting the benefit of a delicious free meal!
Right I’m going to go wash my hands for typing that.
August 7, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Hmm, better keep the teddy away from the dog.
August 7, 2011 at 6:40 pm
can you imagine doing the “lotus” crap with pets? ew
August 7, 2011 at 6:27 pm
jesus h. balls, where the hell is my ativan
August 7, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Awww shit, a friend of mine did the “lotus” baby thing (I’d forgotten what it was called), and I’m so glad this was before I knew her.
She said they kept the placenta attached until the smell got to be too much. She has no idea how lucky she is that her daughter turned out healthy in spite of the unsanitary hippie crap.
That teddy bear is just too creepy for words.
August 7, 2011 at 8:40 pm
Goodbye Sober Day.
August 7, 2011 at 9:28 pm
It rubs the lotion…
August 7, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Goes great with that homicidal quilt from the earlier post.
August 7, 2011 at 10:24 pm
I think that was Buffalo Bill’s childhood toy. Ew. And I mean the Silence of the Lamb’s Bill.
August 8, 2011 at 1:58 am
Are these people fucking kidding? The pictures on the wikipedia page for the lotus birth were super nasty. Who wants to cart around something that looks like an enlarged heart for several days?
August 8, 2011 at 6:22 am
Stitching done by Dr. Frankenstein’s inebriated 5 year old to give it that extra bit of creepy.
August 7, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Mammals eat the placenta to keep scavenger and prey animals away. Wonder no more bitch.
August 7, 2011 at 4:48 pm
See, I thought this was pretty common knowledge…oh the crazy things that ignorant people do
August 7, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Can we talk about the studly muscles and virile hair on that drawing? What are you giving birth to, madam?
August 7, 2011 at 5:19 pm
A race of atomic supermen that will conquer the world.
August 7, 2011 at 10:10 pm
If I had a guarantee this would happen, I might consider having children.
August 8, 2011 at 2:06 am
That is one sexy baby!
August 7, 2011 at 4:49 pm
So if you are a crack addict does this give you a freebie by eating it? Also by comparing humans to animals that eat grass to settle thier stomach makes me question the judgement of those who want too.
August 7, 2011 at 6:41 pm
dont they eat grass to make themselves puke? (i’m thinking dogs and cats)
August 7, 2011 at 11:19 pm
Some do. Some just eat it because they like it. My cat will climb up my leg, yelling, to get at a piece of fresh grass – and she’s barfed maybe once or twice in the five years we’ve had her.
August 8, 2011 at 6:23 am
You’re so lucky. I have old cats, one of whom needs thyroid medication. It seems like all I do is clean up cat puke.
August 8, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Believe me, I know.
(Growing up, we had pukey cats – my brother and I were trained at an early age to rush cats to hard surfaces if we heard that dreaded *hurk hurk hurk* sound.)
August 7, 2011 at 4:50 pm
i was ok until i saw the never ending placenta bowl *gag*
August 7, 2011 at 4:50 pm
Many years ago SNL did a “Placenta Helper” ad skit. I cannot find it now but I find lots of discussion about it. It was very funny.
August 7, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Oh yeah that’s an oldie, mid 70′s I believe. Here’s a transcript!
http://www.justblowme.com/showthread.php/19418-Classic-SNL-skit-Placenta-Helper
August 7, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Ah, the placenta! STFU Parents has made me completely immune to the nasty things the awkward folks do with their leftover baby meat.
August 7, 2011 at 4:58 pm
…and this is why no one comes to your dinner parties mom.
August 7, 2011 at 5:02 pm
I remember the good old days when people who needed to connect with their primal selves just buried the placenta in the back yard.
August 7, 2011 at 9:41 pm
at least that has reasonable arguments for it, is sanitary, and does not endanger the baby.
August 8, 2011 at 3:43 pm
Or donated it and saved other peoples babies.
Surely that would be better then making “Placenta spaghetti”
August 7, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I really don’t get the logic of placenta recipes.
Either (a) you are acting like a non-human mammal mother, in which case, why the heck are you cooking the thing? Non-human animals simply eat it, raw and unseasoned, no recipe needed. And wouldn’t cooking it destroy any of the nutrients that supposedly are the other reason to eat such a thing?
Or (b) you are a human being who wants to eat a cooked placenta, for some weird reason, in which case why the heck are you justifying it by what other animals do, since human beings are the only animals that cook their food?
Also, why do these people always cite cats as their exemplars? Wouldn’t chimps or gorillas make more sense? (Do chimps eat their placentas?)
August 7, 2011 at 6:44 pm
google says gorillas do, and some chimpanzees do the lotus thing.
August 8, 2011 at 2:08 am
Do they carry the placenta into a hot tub in a pretty glass bowl?
August 8, 2011 at 6:26 am
In fairness, though, I’ve ALSO seen them (apes) using their own urine stream as a drinking fountain. Unless you’ve been trapped in a cave for several days, it’d be wiser to go get a Gatorade.
August 7, 2011 at 8:45 pm
I have flung my own poo. But I draw the line at eating Junior’s Jerkey.
August 8, 2011 at 6:03 pm
I think cats are a. traditionally seen as models for labor (they’re supposed to be lucky in a delivery room), and b. may be the only nonhuman mammal a lot of people have seen give birth.
August 7, 2011 at 5:04 pm
And I thought the Olive Garden was bad enough…
August 7, 2011 at 5:06 pm
hmmmmmmm…she went to college and wonders why wild animals eat placenta?
1) animals do not go to the grocery store so the placenta is a form of food to sustain an animal while it recovers from childbirth.
2) also because of the whole not being able to buy groceries thing, the placenta boosts milk production until the recovering animal can hunt or graze again
3) and this one is important…birthing one’s young in the wild leaves the animal susceptible to attack, and a big pile of bloody placenta in the middle of your den or hiding place is a beacon for any creature with sharper teeth then you and wants a little dinner….and since you’re all into being a wild animal and don’t know how to bag and dispose of all that bloody tissue in a landfill or something, YOU EAT IT!
Crap…I never went to college and I could think of 3 reasons there NOT to eat my placenta.
Oh….and IT’s Gross!
August 7, 2011 at 5:12 pm
The mammal mother also eats it to replenish all the vitamins and nutrients its body has used up in the pregnancy. They usually don’t have regular access to prenatal vitamens, doctor visits, and a mom-to-be blogs out in the wild.
August 14, 2011 at 11:01 pm
You sure? I could have sworn there was a Lactating Badgers blog out there.
August 7, 2011 at 5:08 pm
By the way, if you’re looking to get people interested in eating part of themselves. Maybe you could have gone with a less terrifying illustration. Perhaps one that doesn’t have a baby split open next to the nastiness you’re trying to convince people to choke down?
August 7, 2011 at 6:45 pm
if you didn’t know what a placenta is, it kinda looks like you are supposed to remove it from inside the baby.
August 7, 2011 at 9:30 pm
“Waddaya mean it’s not in the baby?!?! Oops, boy is my face red!”
August 7, 2011 at 9:42 pm
would it be an argument in court?
“my doula said to eat it, and the picture she gave me clearly shows that you have to open the baby.”
August 7, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Times like this I can’t help but mourn the loss of Ronco. I can just see it now…
The Placent-o-Matic!
You can slide, dice, saute, braise, boil, bake, roast, or fricasse with just one push of a button!
With the optional crafting attachment, you can
* Make ink prints for the grandparents with the decorative paints and glitter!
* Carve it up and preserve the lovely lumps to send as thank-yous for all the gifts you receved! (Preservative included)
* Make a teddy bear, frog, clown doll, or troll doll, preserve, and save for the chlid’s first toy!
Call now! Operators standing by!
August 7, 2011 at 5:25 pm
Nice! I heard that in Dan Akroyd’s voice (but I still picture him with a bass in hand).
August 7, 2011 at 5:41 pm
Now I’m got a hankering for a smoothie!
August 7, 2011 at 5:58 pm
this actually reminds me of Gallagher’s comedy act, just without a hammer and with grosser things splattering around.. get your plastic ready.. =(
August 8, 2011 at 2:10 am
Mugsy Doodle, you are pure genius. Mugsy Doodle for president!
August 7, 2011 at 5:09 pm
“The placenta is sacred”? As someone who has had one plop of her body and who will have another plop out in several months, I can say that I firmly believe there is nothing sacred about it. It’s medical waste.
August 7, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Believe it or not, some companies buy this “medical waste” and use it in cosmetics. They use them from animals too.
August 7, 2011 at 9:43 pm
they do it with foreskins, too. erk.
August 8, 2011 at 2:10 am
Didn’t Agatha Christie write that?
August 8, 2011 at 10:17 am
If I’m not incorrect, foreskins are used for making skin grafts for burn victims, and cord blood is stored in case your bouncing baby develops some sort of blood or genetic disorder (and I think they’re doing something with the stem cells in there). So, not exactly medical waste.
Having said that, your average doctor has to go to school for absolute ages – I think he/she knows what is and is not medical waste.
August 8, 2011 at 10:05 am
I believe it. The closest a placenta is ever getting to my face is when my doctor said, “Do you want to see the placenta?” and held it up. You know, I’m there getting my vulva stitched back up, and this woman is dangling placenta in my face. Needless to say, I don’t eat it, and I don’t smear it on my face.
August 8, 2011 at 6:06 pm
I think it can be sacred without you needing to eat it. You can lovingly and respectfully put it in a biohazard bag. Or bury it under a tree. Or whatever.
I guess you can even eat it, if you’re bound and determined, but dear God, don’t pay someone fifty bucks to advise you on it. There’s plenty of information free on the Internet.
August 7, 2011 at 5:11 pm
MMmmmm… Just like Mama used to make.
August 7, 2011 at 5:16 pm
I’ve never watched “19 and Counting,” so I don’t know the answer to this question: Has this subject ever been raised? If so, do the kids clamor for more of that great placenta casserole that only mama makes?
August 7, 2011 at 5:23 pm
No, the Duggars are ultra-conservatives, not hippies. They do eat tater tot casserole, which is almost as gross.
August 7, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Heathen! How dare you blaspheme the tater tot casserole?!
August 7, 2011 at 7:30 pm
I love Tater Tots. I’d try it.
August 7, 2011 at 5:17 pm
For the record, I don’t have a problem with people eating placentas. It’s not something that I would personally eat by choice (kind of like pickles), but I’m not going to condemn anyone else for choosing to do this.
What I do have a problem with is people justifying it by saying “other mammals do it!” Yes, yes they do. But my dog also eats her own poo and vomit, which makes me question the wisdom of looking to animals for culinary recommendations.
August 7, 2011 at 5:22 pm
^this forever
August 7, 2011 at 6:54 pm
people shouldn’t eat vomit? well… i’m glad i din’t do that then… yep. i definately didn’t.
that’s what you get from being raised by wolves.
August 7, 2011 at 8:32 pm
I have no problem writing off people who eat their own placentas as being batshit. It isn’t just a food choice. They may not be poisonous, but they AREN’T FOOD FOR THE NORMAL HUMAN BEING.
But I’m totally with you on paragraph 2.
August 8, 2011 at 11:12 am
I don’t know if it’s quite along the same lines as pickles, but I’m mostly with you. And I’m not going to condemn people who (quietly) eat placentas. It’s the people running around going “OMG! Placentas are ~*magikal*~ and anyone who doesn’t eat/make art with/carry around their placenta is stupid and evil and wants to destroy the world!”
Those people I condemn. And I may or may not throw poo at them. But that’s cool, because a lot of mammals throw pool.
August 7, 2011 at 5:18 pm
It’s times like this I’m reminded of the stories my parents said when I was born.
Doctor: “Where’s the damn medical waste basket?! I’ve got a placenta here!”
August 7, 2011 at 5:22 pm
“your placenta is sacred”
no. my placenta is a piece of medical waste.
The BABY is the sacred part.
But the f*cking hash brownies down already and step away from the computer. You are mixing this up all over the place.
August 7, 2011 at 11:32 pm
MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Placenta Brownies!
August 7, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Its medical waste. This is just as dangerous as eating a removed bowel
August 7, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Mmmm, just think of all the dirty, molecular gastronomic things I could do to that…
August 8, 2011 at 1:38 am
It is an interesting point. Cannibalism is actually dangerous to your health (personally that’s my top reason for eating people). The placenta is the same species as you, making it cannibalism – in fact, while it’s not genetically identical to your own tissue, it is genetically part of your own offspring, making it very close to your own DNA. I’ve never heard about health risks with eating placentas, but isn’t it unhealthy to eat things that are related to you?
August 8, 2011 at 1:41 am
*my top reason for NOT eating people.
Sorry.
August 8, 2011 at 2:13 am
I liked it better the first way.
August 8, 2011 at 11:00 am
I don’t see how genetics would make any difference. It’s not like the genetic material is somehow incorporated back into your body – you’re digesting it (breaking it down).
That doesn’t make it any less psychologically disturbing, mind you.
August 8, 2011 at 11:15 am
Actually, IIRC, things that are genetically close to you are actually easier for your body to break down. But you gotta know they’re healthy first. Because things that are related to you can carry diseases that you are susceptible to. (And other than mad cow disease, you’re less likely to catch things from cows.) But if it’s YOUR placenta, probably you don’t have to worry about that.
The moral? Don’t go around stealing other people’s placentas in the hope of being able to eat their soul. You may get their diseases.
August 7, 2011 at 5:23 pm
I look back fondly to the days where no one served placenta pot pie to their family. And the weirdest thing you ever heard of people eating was when Granny Clampet was screaming for people to sit down at “the fancy eatin’ table”
August 7, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Is it just me, or is there something off about the drawing of the baby? I don’t mean the exposed chest cavity – I mean the proportions of the face.
August 7, 2011 at 5:45 pm
you mean the slightly mongoloid forehead?
August 7, 2011 at 7:09 pm
i dont think the eyebrows jut forward enough to call it mongoloid. but the hairline is a good 5 cm behind the usual baby-do.
August 7, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Maybe it’s a baby Neandertal?
I hear they ate their baby’s placenta and that’s why they went extinct.
August 7, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Um…the placenta filters out toxins from mother to baby. I would imagine eating a placenta would be much like consuming your dirty air or water filter. Gross. *hurk*
August 7, 2011 at 6:02 pm
“The placenta is an incredibly vascular tissue and contains a substantial amount of blood. Serious illnesses such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be contracted through exposure to placental tissue if the woman happens to be infected. Simply handling the placenta is sufficient to spread disease; eating it certainly poses risks as well (and, no, thoroughly cooking the placenta doesn’t necessarily make it safe to eat).”
if you eat placenta you’ll get AIDS….and die
August 7, 2011 at 9:44 pm
that made me giggle.
August 7, 2011 at 5:40 pm
ahhh reminds me of the days when my mother would give birth and we would celebrate by having brunch with crepes a la placenta and mimosas
August 7, 2011 at 5:58 pm
Alright who dissected the baby?
August 7, 2011 at 6:34 pm
*sigh* This is why we can’t have nice things.
August 7, 2011 at 6:02 pm
It’s basically a poo-string. You’re eating a poo-string.
.
$20 says the twit that posted this demands de-veined shrimp.
August 7, 2011 at 6:13 pm
There are many absurd claims in this advertisement. Allow me to share my attempt at quantifying them:
1. They teach this shit in college, yo.
2. Expelled organs are sacred; thus worthy of honor and reverence.
3. One can (and should!) honor a sacred item by eating it.
4. Honoring one’s expelled organs requires expert advice.
5. $50 is a reasonable fee for a perfect recipe for placenta cacciatore.
August 7, 2011 at 11:29 pm
This is the exact reasoning behind why you always get the best cheeseburgers in India.
August 8, 2011 at 10:21 am
Oh, good, then I know what to do with the guts I gacked up.
August 8, 2011 at 11:17 am
Awww. I’m a Christian. There aren’t any sacred objects left for me to eat. Except maybe crucifixes. Do you think the local Cathedral would get mad if I broke in and started cooking their statue of Mary or Jesus?
August 8, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Er, I believe the Host is actaully INTENDED for human consumption–depending on your denomination.
Eating altar silver is not recommended. It could have trace lead in it.
August 7, 2011 at 6:14 pm
I love that one of the “related posts you may be interested in” that were listed when I first looked at this (prior to commenting, which then provided me with new suggestions) was something beginning with “Tom Tom.” Oh, Mr. Cruise.
August 7, 2011 at 6:19 pm
Yeah, I saw parents take a bite out of a placenta right after delivery during my ob rotation in nursing school. I about effing fell over. They had blood on ther faces and it was freaky! No one saw it coming either, they asked to look at it and then they both took a bite.
August 7, 2011 at 6:40 pm
To be fair, they did the same thing after his gall bladder surgery.
August 7, 2011 at 7:04 pm
Clearly this can only be followed by combining their future medical waste into a sort of vestigial organ take on ‘turducken’…
Gallcentappensil, anyone?
August 7, 2011 at 6:58 pm
wow. that’s just… wow. did they look like zombies?
August 7, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Jeebus Christ on a cracker, I know I would have burst out with something.
August 8, 2011 at 8:32 am
I think I would have burst out with vomit. Everywhere.
August 8, 2011 at 11:18 am
That sounds like the start of a horror flick.
August 7, 2011 at 6:58 pm
If you want to be scared just do a search for ‘placenta’ on etsy any day of the week.
August 7, 2011 at 7:01 pm
This is just an excuse for cannibalism.
August 7, 2011 at 7:03 pm
Kudos to the seller for using an illustration that actually looks EVEN GROSSER THAN THE CONCEPT ITSELF. It’s like they said, “HOW can we make eating a discarded human tissue chunk any grosser? I know- add it splorging its way out of a dissected baby!”
Ick. (Also, it’s interesting to me that hippies are now finding it trendy to consider placenta sacred- but, typically, not full-grown fetuses… :S worship the sack, kill the baby… Society is doomed.)
August 9, 2011 at 11:19 am
It does not help that the fetus looks like a middle-aged Gary Sinise. Or does it?
August 7, 2011 at 7:14 pm
August 7, 2011 at 9:43 pm
You know what else is filled with nutrients? Gummy vitamins. $50 and I’ll tell you how to eat one.
August 7, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Do your baby (and others)a favor-donate the cord to a cord bank. Not only can it be useful in the future if your child develops a blood-related disease, but the stem cells in it can be used to help perfect treatment for patients with Huntington’s Chorea and Alzheimers. You get a cute kid, and a chance to help humanity. Win/win.
August 7, 2011 at 9:47 pm
i wish that was more widespread. if i wanted to do that with my birth i’d have to pay to have it stored and transported to a bigger hospital.
also i didn’t know about it until after it was (i assume) disposed of.
August 7, 2011 at 7:42 pm
I ate her placenta with some fava beans and a nice chianti …
August 7, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
August 7, 2011 at 8:41 pm
Evidence that it gives you some benefit that you can’t get by eating something that wasn’t expelled from your body? I seriously doubt it. I also would wager that cooking it kills most of the alleged benefits…and eating it raw probably poses other hazards.
Mind firmly closed and padlocked on this one.
August 7, 2011 at 9:48 pm
i think some dry it or so the smoothie thing.
hurk.
August 7, 2011 at 11:39 pm
“But now If you promised me that eating a piece of every single piece of every Regretsy fan’s poop would guarantee me an easier time of things or more sleep I would gladly get my fork and knife ready.”
So all you need to do something objectionable is a promise from some stranger on the Internet that it will give you “an easier time of things”? See, there’s your problem right there…
August 8, 2011 at 7:46 am
Get this man a diaper salad with a side o’ taint chafin’s.
August 7, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Please tell me there’s something anything illegal about listing this product.
August 7, 2011 at 8:06 pm
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August 7, 2011 at 8:16 pm
I’m pretty sure if something comes out of you via an orifice or surgical cut, it can be considered yours.
At least that’s what they say at airport security.
August 7, 2011 at 8:46 pm
OK, I see that.
“Ma’am, is that YOUR plascenta? You’ll have to pack it in your luggage or leave it here-no unwrapped food items are allowed through security.”
I suppose it ranks with the people who believe that drinking your own pee is good for overall health. I mean “rank” in every way possible. These people can’t buy fish without consu
lting that little list they carry around.
Then again, notice people seem to line up every Sunday to get the chance to eat OTHER animal’s plascenta and unborn children. Why eat that of a stranger when your own is so familiar?
August 7, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Um. I think you pretty much pegged it. I believe it was Freud who said the most ‘familiar’ things are the source of the most uncanny–that is assuming one CAN be on familiar terms with human placenta as opposed to animal placenta, and even then, that is assuming there are more people lining up to eat other mammal placenta than human placenta. Which I doubt.
All that shit aside, the dude ate A PIECE OF HIS WIFE. Christ. How is that “mundane” compared to what is essentially a boiled duck egg?
August 7, 2011 at 9:51 pm
wait, what? who is eating other people’s placenta’s and children? and why on sunday? are you making some communion reference? i was with you til the last paragraph.
August 8, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Actually, it’s been taken to court. If iit comes out of you in a hospital or dr’s office or medical lab, it belongs to said hospital or research lab. Which is why it’s legal for a researcher to patent a gene that came out of your blood sample and they don’t owe you a thing if they make big bucks off it. Or why they can refuse to give you your placenta if you give birth in a hospital.
August 7, 2011 at 8:26 pm
How about if all of these assholes want to be so fucking natural, they forego any drugs or C-sections?
Read the following article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-07-18-placenta-ingestion_N.htm
Gotta love the moron who actually took the hospital to court. Modern medicine is okay for her when the labor is in trouble, but damn those crazy modern quacks when they tell her they can’t legally give her the bio-hazardous material so she can FUCKING EAT IT.
This is so disgusting I can’t even put it into words. I’m going to go get drunk now.
August 7, 2011 at 9:53 pm
i got mad at my dentist when i was little because she wouldn’t let me keep my tooth to show my friends. she said she’d write me a note for the tooth fairy if that’s what i was worried about. I glared at her and said “this is my last babytooth, do you think i haven’t seen mum putting the money in the jar?”
my parents refused to force the dentist to give me back my tooth. i was so angry.
August 8, 2011 at 10:27 am
*headdesk* Yes, eating your dried placenta in little gelatin tablets is going to help your postpartum depression. Oh my aching ovaries, has NO ONE heard of the placebo effect in placenta-land?
August 8, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Placebos work, though. Eating ecapsulated placenta seems as good a one as any.
August 7, 2011 at 8:32 pm
My dog used to eat its own shit, should we do that too? I’m so glad I’m done having kids and I can just get on with looking down my nose at the people who breast feed their 2 year old and don’t immunize them.
August 7, 2011 at 9:54 pm
i dont care whether you breastfeed your baby until it goes to school, really. i’d probably feel uncomfortble watching it, but in your own time, whatever.
but the no-vacinatins thing pisses me right off.
August 8, 2011 at 2:19 am
Seriously. Those people are a danger to society.
August 8, 2011 at 7:34 am
The so-called science behind it has been proven a fraud.
August 7, 2011 at 8:38 pm
I’ll play devil’s advocate a little bit, and say that I can understand why people like the seller think that placentas are sacred. Without it, there would far more likely than not be be no (live) baby. It outlives its usefulness after the baby is born, though, and I don’t think eating it is a great idea. Charging $50 to recommend placenta recipes is pretentious when anyone can find good recipes and advice for free elsewhere online.
August 8, 2011 at 11:25 am
If all my skin suddenly disappeared, there would be no live me. My skin is still not sacred. Useful, but not sacred.
Useful =/= sacred
necessary =/= sacred
Unless you are part of some religion whose deity is embodied in a placenta, it’s not sacred.
August 7, 2011 at 8:43 pm
When I was a kid and witnessed a foal’s birth for the first time noone warned me that mares eat the placenta. I thought the grossest part would be seeing the baby exit the vag. Boy was I wrong. The things you learn on the farm.
August 7, 2011 at 9:55 pm
yeah, i saw a cow do it. and it was like forcing it down and half barfing it up again. sooooo gross.
August 7, 2011 at 8:48 pm
I suppose vegetarians have to make do with the seitan or tofu versions. It just never tastes like the real thing.
August 7, 2011 at 9:07 pm
I like my Placenta State Fair style: Wrapped around a Twinkie, Batter Dipped and Deep Fried.
August 7, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Gotta follow that shit up with a beer and a cigarette, though. We have to be classy about this.
August 7, 2011 at 11:06 pm
Placenta! placenta! placenta! placenta!
It’s Placenta!
Yummy, Crunchy Placenta!
August 8, 2011 at 8:43 am
Try it Animal Style! Mmmmm!
August 7, 2011 at 9:12 pm
What in the fucking wide wide world of sports make people want to do this? It’s as if these whackjobs are deifying all our bodily functions. Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, go out in a field, squat, push that baby out, chew off the umbilical, gnaw on the steaming, raw placenta and bark at the moon, but for the love of pete, keep it to yourself! Now, ‘scuse me while I go barf.
August 7, 2011 at 9:28 pm
I really don’t know what to say about this, except that it’s definitely gross gross gross. I mean, seriously? If you eat the placenta, are you going to be the same type of person who saves all your kids’ baby teeth and every bit of hair from every haircut they’ve ever had?
I bet that stuff ends up on Etsy as art, too.
August 7, 2011 at 9:56 pm
mum saved my baby teeth. and some hair from the first haircut.
i didnt think it was gross.
ALL the hair would be weird, though.
August 7, 2011 at 11:40 pm
My mom saved them. She didn’t EAT them.
August 7, 2011 at 9:32 pm
I was too tired to cook after I gave birth. Thank god for Betty Crocker.
August 8, 2011 at 12:35 pm
NOW you’re talkin’; I’ll be all up in them guts now!
August 7, 2011 at 9:33 pm
Totes abhorb!
August 7, 2011 at 9:34 pm
“I was fascinated and wondered why most mammals ingest their placenta, and why other mammals such as humans, do not.”
Probably for the same reason humans don’t eat their own shit?
August 7, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Dogs eat their own shit… why don’t we? *off to research*
August 7, 2011 at 9:51 pm
We’re working on it. Apparently you need a plastic hand on a stick first.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/16/scientist-poop-burger-video_n_878210.html
August 7, 2011 at 9:46 pm
I hope these people eat their vomit much like my dogs always have, and my cats too. “Ohh, look! I just love it when partially masticated and digested kibble and grass get all mushy like this, it’s a fucking delicacy you know.”
August 7, 2011 at 10:09 pm
I liked the part where she never mentioned what college course she took.
August 7, 2011 at 10:22 pm
Someone just posted this to the forum, it fits so well I had to share.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/78407620/i-created-a-placenta-and-all-i-got-was
August 7, 2011 at 10:37 pm
Yes, it was me. I want this! I any of you fat jealous losers buy this, so help me, I’ll…………….flounce. Or something. Unless you buy it for me. That would be fine.
August 8, 2011 at 11:30 am
(Wondering if the “should of” was an intentional jab at the educational level of people who eat placentas . . . )
August 9, 2011 at 11:25 am
There are lots of crafts you can make with a baby, but they are illegal in most of the 50 states.
August 7, 2011 at 10:41 pm
The sidebar is currently giving me ads for IHOP.
WORST PANCAKE TOPPING EVER.
August 7, 2011 at 11:14 pm
If we can momentarily forget that this is something that has been stewing inside you for the past 40 weeks, in fluid that includes the fetus’ excretions, I still can’t imagine stomaching the texture. It has got to be like eating the chewy-veiny part of liver. Seriously, I’d have to fast for a month before I was so ravenous that I’d consider chewing it.
However, I do imagine it’d be a great diet to lose the baby weight: you can’t eat anything until you eat that placenta!
August 8, 2011 at 5:11 am
Dear neo hippies,
Wild animals do not snack on poop and placenta because it’s deeply spiritual and meaningful to them. They do it to clean up, so as not to attract predators to their tasty, tasty newborns.
Also, they do not have diaper pails.
August 8, 2011 at 5:52 am
I never thought I’d come to consider how lucky marsupials are.
August 8, 2011 at 5:53 am
Also, placenta should not be used as meat, but for dessert. Because the word means “cake” in Latin.
Don’t ask me why.
Actually, I might not want to know.
August 8, 2011 at 5:54 am
You know, I like haggis, liver, chorizo, and I’ll prepare my own meat to an extent. I can butcher a whole chicken. I’m not particularly squeamish about organs, or about eating them.
That said, I equate this (like others recently) to 2 girls, one cup. This is NOT FOOD. It is bodily waste *left over* from a life-sustaining process. It’s like faecal matter, urine, or menstrual excretia. The end process and offal of a bodily function. Eating it is a practice that probably won’t kill you if you do it once or twice, but it’s certainly not wise, healthy, or logical. Or sane. Let’s not forget sane.
August 8, 2011 at 8:25 am
According to wikipedia:
“The word placenta comes from the Greek word for ‘cake’”
Oh my God! These poor souls are confused! Someone needs to let them know they are eating at the discharge of their FUCKING VAGINAL WALL, and not some delicious baked treat!
August 8, 2011 at 8:35 am
I read somewhere that the reason mother dogs eat their babies’ shit is so that the smell doesn’t alert predators to the tasty, defenseless babies lying around.
So that would make sense, as far as their eating the placenta goes.
But Etsy mothers don’t have that problem. Even if a predator was dumb enough to want to ingest that much cake pop and bitchtardery, they’d have to fight through the endless ring of ass-kissing yesmen in their knitting circle, and I don’t know of any shark, grizzly, or lioness who would be willing to spend hours licking that stench off themselves for two bites of baby.
August 8, 2011 at 8:55 am
Medical Waste sacred?
HOLY SHIT!
August 8, 2011 at 9:25 am
Exactly.
August 8, 2011 at 11:53 am
Now I’m going to barf every time I see spaghetti, awesome.
August 8, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I predict that the next thing we will see on etsy is placenta’s haunted with the ghosts of a still-born vampire babies for sale.
August 9, 2011 at 3:25 am
I’ll be the first to admit I had a moment of kale-loving hippyness & saved the placenta from my two latest rugrats to bury under a tree. But by the time I got home from the hospital…that stuff was stinky (& yes, they’d put it in the fridge for me). No way would I be putting it in, on or near my mouth. But the tree loved it.