Obviously, every culture is rich with its own particular culinary customs. I remember staring at my wife quizzically when, immediately after the day we were married, I spied her putting a portion of our wedding cake into our freezer. The tradition, she explained, was that we were to eat it one year later. I didn’t quite get it but, like many directives that would follow in the ensuing years, I dutifully complied. One year to the day, the wife and I choked down a bit of the cold, crumbly and now tasteless substance that had been part of our cake, quickly washing it down with some Champagne to seal the deal.
Mercifully, my wife didn’t turn out to be that much of a stickler for tradition. For example, upon the birth of our first child, there was no discussion whatsoever of us taking the placenta home to bury or, more worryingly, consume.
You might be surprised, though. Lots of people are doing just that.
Frontier-blazing foodies like the ones in the San Francisco Food Adventure Club, profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle, have been eager to cross the taboo. “We’re into rarefied food and experimentation,” attested club founder Beth Pickens, 32. As such, they procured a placenta from a willing new mother and prepared a dish with the organ that riffed off liver rumaki. According to the Chronicle, even some of the club regulars chose to demure.
Music icons John Lennon and Yoko Ono were rumored to have eaten their child’s placenta. Similarly, Tom Cruise joked back in 2006 about anticipating the nutritional benefits of chowing down on his then unborn Suri’s placenta, only to recant the comment shortly afterwards.
The ingestion of placenta is said to hold myriad health and fertility benefits, although western medicine hasn’t been so quick to support those theories. Placentophagy is a time-honored custom for many cultures (and many mammals – even herbivorous ones). And while there are a number of websites out there that cater to the particular need, a simple search for “placenta recipes” yields images I personally would describe as disquieting. As also cited in the Chronicle, PlacentaBenefits.info seems like an informed and gentle place to start.
But even if you’ve overcome your squeamish inhibitions and lingering ethical quandaries, there are still questions. What, for example, is the best apéritif to serve before your … er … afterbirth?
Have you ever dined on placenta? Share your experiences with us if so.