by Bill Schutt
From a biological viewpoint, the first question is, obviously, what is the function of a placenta? As a zoologist I was interested in determining what other mammals (besides white middle-class Americans) ate their own placentas and why they did it.36 There were claims from some midwives and alternative-healthcare advocates extolling the therapeutic benefits of placenta consumption. What were these supposed benefits and, more importantly, was there any proof that they existed? I was also interested in determining whether additional human body parts had been (or were being) ingested for medicinal reasons. Finally, there was the question that had been worming around my brain from the very moment I’d finished the Abrahamian article: What did placenta taste like? Given its bloody, glandular appearance, my initial guess was calves’ liver.
As it turned out, I was wrong.
But first things first.
Advocates of placentophagy are likely to find it more than coincidental that the word placenta is derived from the Greek plakous, or “flat cake.” The Latin term placenta uterina, or uterine cake, was coined by the Italian anatomist, Realdo Colombo. Tempering any culinary-related enthusiasm is the likelihood that the 16th-century scientist was referring to the flattened or slab-like nature of the roughly discus-shaped organ and not its potential as a base for chocolate frosting and candles.
The placenta is the organ that gives more than 9 out of 10 mammals (or roughly 4,000 species) their name—placental mammals. Also known as eutherians, the oldest placental mammals date from around 160 million years ago. Mouselike, they generally kept out of sight while the dinosaurs ran the show. But using their relatively larger brains and enhanced thermoregulatory abilities, they carved out slender niches of their own. Then, approximately 65 million years ago, as the planet underwent cataclysmic environmental changes (including those initiated by a six-mile-wide meteor striking near the current Yucatan Peninsula), the mammals hunkered down and survived. Once the dust settled, and many of our favorite kiddie toys had taken on new roles as fossils, the mammals exploded in diversity, speciating and spreading rapidly across a planet suddenly filled with evolutionary opportunity—a.k.a. open jobs.
Within approximately 10 million years of the dinosaurian demise, mammals diversified into all of the existing mammalian orders—rodents, bats, carnivores, primates, etc. Some took to the air while others returned to the water—each group evolving and passing on its own suite of adaptations, like wings or fins, to supplement basal mammalian characteristics like hair and bigger brains. Many of these species went extinct themselves. Others thrived, eventually outcompeting many of the non-mammalian vertebrates that had also survived the great die-off. And except in isolated regions like Australia and South America (which were effectively isolated from the expansion of the terrestrial placentals), the eutherians even outcompeted the older, non-placental mammals—the marsupials and the egg-laying monotremes.37
The organ that gives placental mammals their name is transient in nature, undergoing its entire rapid development only after conception. The tissue is derived from the fetus, as opposed to the mother, and in humans it has an average diameter of about nine inches. Thickest at its center (up to an inch), it thins out toward the edges and weighs in at just over a pound. The placenta functions as an interface between the mother and the developing fetus, connecting it to the mother’s uterine wall but acting as a buffer as well. The organ itself is richly vascularized, which gives it its dark reddish-blue to crimson color, which relates to the placenta’s life-support function: carrying oxygen and nutrients from the mother to the placenta and then from the placenta to the fetus via the umbilical artery. Structurally, most of the placenta is composed of cells called trophoblasts, which have a dual role. Some form small cavities that fill with maternal blood, thus facilitating the exchange of nutrients, waste, and gases between the fetal and maternal systems. Other trophoblasts specialize in hormone production. Waste products and carbon dioxide travel from the fetus back to the placenta via the umbilical vein. A sheath of connective tissue binds and protects both umbilical vessels, and together the entire structure is known as the umbilical cord.38
The placenta has additional functions, which include the production and release of several hormones, including estrogen (which maintains the uterine lining during pregnancy) and progesterone (which stimulates uterine growth as well as the growth and development of the mammary glands). It also prevents the transfer of some, but not all, harmful substances—blood-borne pathogens for one—from the mother to the developing fetus. Finally, the placenta secretes several substances that effectively cloak the developing fetus from the mother’s immune system—similar to the way in which immunosuppressant drugs prevent the body from rejecting a transplant.
Given its essential role in fetal development, what the human placenta experiences after delivery must surely be the most precipitous fall from grace in all of Organdom. Expelled by the uterine contractions associated with childbirth, this complex and amazing structure goes from revered mammalian namesake to biohazardous “afterbirth” faster than you can scream “PUSH!”
In the vast majority of mammals, though, the newly delivered placenta serves one last purpose.
In 1930, primatologist Otto Tinklepaugh took a break from his groundbreaking study on chimpanzee vaginal plugs to coauthor an article on the birth process in captive rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). He noted that the monkeys, and just about every other terrestrial mammal except humans and camelids (camels, llamas, alpacas, and their relatives) consumed their own placentas after giving birth. More recently, the behavior in the animal kingdom has been studied in rodents, lagomorphs (rabbits and their kin), carnivores, primates, and most artiodactyls (hoofed mammals).
Mark Kristal is the world’s foremost authority on placentophagology, and until recently, he may have been the only expert on the topic. A SUNY Buffalo professor emeritus of psychology, Kristal’s research began more than four decades ago. His work supports the hypothesis that, since placenta-eating has been observed in such a variety of mammals, it probably evolved independently and in response to one or several survival-related problems.
Researchers initially posited that eating the placenta kept the birthing area sanitary while eliminating smells that might attract predators. The fact that chimps giving birth in the trees hung around to eat their placentas instead of simply moving off (or flinging them down on some cheetahs), suggested that a new hypothesis was needed. Answering the call, dietary researchers suggested that placentophagy replenished nutritional losses associated with late-stage pregnancy and delivery. Endocrinologists hypothesized that moms might be acquiring (and replenishing) hormones present in the afterbirth. Other researchers suggested that placentophagy sated a mother’s hunger after the delivery, or that placentophagy demonstrated the new mothers’ tendency to develop “voracious carnivorousness” after giving birth.39
Kristal wasn’t buying it, though. His skepticism for any of those proposed functions stemmed from the complete absence of any valid research on the topic. He and his colleagues set out to investigate placentophagy in non-humans experimentally—in this case, lab rats. As happens frequently, the results of their experiments supported none of the earlier hypotheses. Kristal did suggest, though, that the previously proposed functions of placentophagy might provide secondary benefits, if they existed at all.
“The main thing that we found during our studies turned out to be an opiate-enhancing property,” Kristal said. He explained that placenta consumption by new rat moms appeared to increase the effectiveness of natural pain-relieving substances (opioid peptides) produced by the body. He added that that these enhanced analgesic effects lasted throughout the birth interval between individual “kittens” in a litter—an important point since rats generally give birth to seven to ten individuals.40
Kristal also told me that the results of a second set of experiments linked afterbirth consumption (by rat moms) to a form of reward for parental care. Briefly, the central nervous system, pituitary glan
d, digestive tract, and other organs secrete pain-blocking peptides like endorphins, enkephalins, and dynorphins, which have been used to explain terms like “runner’s high” and “second wind,” as well as the phenomenon in which gravely wounded individuals report feeling little or no pain. Kristal’s experiments indicated that those mothers who consumed their afterbirth received enhanced benefits from these natural painkillers, essentially getting an anesthetic reward for initiating maternal behavior like cleaning their pups.
I asked Kristal how long humans had been practicing placentophagy and how widespread the practice was. “I haven’t discovered any human cultures where it’s done regularly,” he told me. “When placenta-eating is mentioned, it’s usually in the form of a taboo. You have cultures saying things like ‘Animals do it and we’re not animals, so we shouldn’t do it.’ ”
In 2010, researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, searched an ethnographic database of 179 preindustrial societies for any evidence of placenta consumption. Searching for the terms “placenta” and “afterbirth” in the electronic Human Relations Area Files (eHRAF), described as “the gold standard for cross-cultural comparative research,” they found 109 references related to the special treatment and/or disposal of placentas. The most common practice (seen in 15 percent of accounts) was disposal without burial (examples include “throwing it into a lake”), followed by “burial” (9 percent). The latter narrowly beat out my personal favorite “hanging or placing the placenta in a tree” (8 percent). What the UNLV researchers did not find was a single instance of a cultural tradition associated with the consumption of placentas by moms—or anyone else, for that matter.
Considering the ubiquitous nature of placentophagy in mammals, including chimps, our closest non-human relatives, I was surprised they were unable to find at least one culture somewhere where placentas were regularly eaten. I mentioned to Kristal that I’d run across an example of placentophagy in the Great Pharmacopoiea of 1596 (a go-to guide for many New Yorkers seeking medical advice), wherein Li Shih-chen recommended that those suffering from ch’i exhaustion (whose embarrassing symptoms included “coldness of the sexual organs with involuntary ejaculation of semen”) partake in a mixture of human milk and placental tissue.
“It is an ingredient in herbal medicine,” Kristal said. “In fact, there are a lot of placentophagia/midwife/doula websites where two things come up repeatedly. One—the benefits that I found in my research, which we never extrapolated to humans, and two—the [mistaken] idea that it’s been done for centuries in China.” 41
“So has it?” I asked.
“Only rarely,” he replied. “The other thing is that we don’t know if it works. In terms of Chinese medicine, there are thousands and thousands of preparations whose efficacies have never been tested empirically. Nowadays there’s a rule of thumb, which I don’t agree with, that if the Chinese use it in herbal medicine, it must work. That’s really a silly attitude. But I wouldn’t call the Chinese a placentophagic society.”
On a more recent and Western note, I had also come across a report that in rural Poland in the mid-20th century, peasants “dry [placenta] and use it in powdered form as medicine, or the dried cord may be saved and given to the child when he goes to school for the first time, to make him a good scholar.” I ran this by my Polish bat biologist colleague Wieslaw Bogdanowicz, who did a bit of investigation himself (presumably asking some of the peasants he knew if they’d heard of such a practice). The answer came back “nie,” with my friend telling me it was probably safe to assume that the iPad had overtaken the uCord as an educational tool.
“So why is placenta-eating becoming more popular in the U.S.?” I asked Kristal, mentioning the flurry of recent articles, including the subtle classic, “I Ate My Wife’s Placenta Raw in a Smoothie and Cooked in a Taco.”
“There were two trends,” he told me, “one in the sixties and seventies, and one now. The first had a lot to do with a kind of back-to-nature-hippie-commune philosophy. You’d hear these media reports based on anecdotal evidence that at some commune, when one of the members gave birth, they took the placenta and cooked it up in a stew and everybody partook of it. It wasn’t linked to medical benefits, really.”
Kristal continued. “What’s happening now with this fad is that midwives and doulas are responsible for spreading the word that ingesting placenta after delivery has positive female health benefits. The evidence, when you try to track it down, is anecdotal, spread by [these people] and by their journals.” Significantly, Kristal mentioned that there hadn’t been a single double-blind, placebo-controlled study on the reputed benefits to humans of placentophagy.
To learn why people were currently eating their own placentas, I contacted Claire Rembis, the owner/founder of Your Placenta, a one-stop center for all of your placenta-related needs. Based out of her home in Plano, Texas, Rembis not only offers the standard placenta encapsulation services but will also prepare placenta skin salves, placenta-infused oils, and placenta tinctures, which she described as “organic alcohol” in which a mom’s placenta has been soaked for six to seven weeks. Additionally, there’s placenta artwork, in which a client’s placenta can be used to make an impression print (balloons and flowers seem popular, with the umbilical cord standing in quite nicely for the balloon string or flower stem). During the impression-making process, vegetable- and fruit-based paints are dabbed on to the placenta, which is then pressed between a clean surface (like a diaper changing pad) and a piece of heavy art-stock paper. Immediately after its modeling gig, the placenta is rinsed off and undergoes further preparation in order to assume its rightful place within a gel capsule. For those moms who want to keep their placenta closer to their heart, Claire also makes necklaces—tiny, stoppered bottles, full of “placenta beads” (a secret formula) and available with or without gemstones.
Soon after an introductory email, Claire invited me down to Dallas. I thanked her but declined, explaining that I’d just begun a new school year at LIU.
“Well, if you’re ever in Texas, I’d be happy to prepare one for you,” she responded. “I browsed your website and think you might enjoy it.”
Wait a minute, I thought as I read her email. Was she inviting me down to Texas to eat placenta?
I followed up.
She was.
“I’ve got some of my daughter’s placenta in the freezer right now,” Claire said. She mentioned that her husband, William, was a chef and loved coming up with new placenta-based recipes. “A few months ago I worked with a mom who wasn’t keen on swallowing pills,” Claire told me. “So, we made her placenta tea and chocolate placenta truffles.”
With an offer like that on the table, what else could I do but book a flight to Dallas?
Two nights before my trip to Texas, I received an email from Claire. “We have a bit of an adventure heading our way this Friday,” she wrote. Apparently her babysitter had cancelled at the last minute, “and so our sweet little angels will be here for the placenta fun.”
No problem, I thought and kept reading. I soon learned that not only were her kids “amazing,” they were homeschooled, and there were ten of them.
“Well, this is definitely going to make things more interesting,” I wrote back.
As I flew into Dallas the evening before our meeting, the pilot of our 737 skirted an enormous weather front, providing me with a spectacular view of the light show unfolding within the towering wall of clouds. We landed less than an hour after 85-mile-per-hour, straight-line winds had strafed the Big D and its suburbs, doing a serious number on the electrical grid and (as I would learn) temporarily knocking out the power in Claire’s house. There was definitely an unsettling vibe in Dallas and it wasn’t just the weather. Two days earlier, America’s first Ebola patient, a Liberian named Thomas Duncan, had fallen ill at an apartment complex not far from the hotel where I was staying, and now over a hundred people who’d come into contact with the sick man were being alerted—some of them quarantined.42
Seconds after chef William ushered me into their ranch-style home in a quiet suburban neighborhood, I was literally hit by a wall of children—touching my hair and shoulders (“soft” and “higher than Dad’s,” respectively), asking me if I had an iPhone 6 (“Yes”), asking if they could hold my iPhone 6 (“Maybe later.”).
I flashed back to a scene in one of my favorite films, Raising Arizona, as Nick Cage’s character describes his first encounter with the Arizona Quintuplets to his wife, played by Holly Hunter. “They started crying and they were all over me. It was kind of horrifying, honey.”
For a few seconds I actually thought about bolting.
Noticing my rather obvious distress, William Rembis, an amiable, 40-something-ish longhair, broke out his own bottle of wine and handed me a Dixie cup. I quickly gulped down the contents.
As the bell sounded for Round 2, most of the Rembis kids now had something to show me (“Look how far I can stretch my ear”), tell me (“We’re going to watch Babe now”), or ask me (“Are you going to eat my mom’s placenta?”). Unlike the fictional Arizona quints, the Rembis children came in a variety of sizes—from a pea-pod infant up to a husky 15-year-old boy. There seemed to be about a half dozen cute little girls including a pair of 8-year-old twins. Two of the kids were named Cinderella and Belle.43
Soon enough, I met Claire Rembis, who hadn’t been feeling well that day. She had a shy smile, which she flashed only rarely. Almost immediately Claire sent William scurrying off to Wal-Mart for some placenta prep supplies: disposable diaper changing pads, paper towels, and fresh garlic.
