Human placentophagy

Human placentophagy, or consumption of the placenta, is defined as "the ingestion of a human placenta postpartum, at any time, by any person, either in raw or altered (e.g., cooked, dried, steeped in liquid) form". Placentophagy can be divided into two categories, maternal placentophagy and non-maternal placentophagy.

While there are several anecdotes of different cultures practicing placentophagy in varying contexts, maternal placentophagy started in the US in the 1970s, with little to no evidence of its practice in any traditional or historic culture. Midwives and alternative-health advocates in the U.S. are the primary groups encouraging post-partum maternal placentophagy.

Maternal placentophagy has a small following in Western cultures, fostered by celebrities like January Jones. The placenta has high protein, rich iron and nutrient content, but there is inconclusive scientific evidence about any health benefit to its consumption. The risks of human placentophagy are also still unclear, but there has been one confirmed case of an infant needing hospitalization due to a group B strep blood infection tied to their mother's consumption of placenta capsules.

Maternal placentophagy is defined as "a mother's ingestion of her own placenta postpartum, in any form, at any time". Of the more than 4000 species of placental mammals, most, including herbivores, regularly engage in maternal placentophagy, thought to be an instinct to hide any trace of childbirth from predators in the wild. The exceptions to placentophagy include mainly humans, pinnipeds, sirenia, cetaceans, perissodactyls, and camelids.

Non-maternal placentophagy is defined as "the ingestion of the placenta by any person other than the mother, at any time". Such instances of placentophagy have been attributed to the following: a shift toward carnivorousness at birth, specific hunger, and general hunger. With most Eutherian mammals, the placenta is consumed postpartum by the mother. Historically, humans more commonly consume the placenta of another woman under special circumstances.

In a 1979 article in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, William Ober evaluated the possibility that certain ancient cultures that practiced human sacrifice also practiced human placentophagy. However, a 2010 survey of 179 societies found that none practices placentophagy regularly. A 2007 study similarly found that placentophagy has never been described as a culturally normative practice in any historical source.

From an evolutionary perspective, it appears that the human species must have stopped practicing maternal placentophagy at a fairly early stage, since there is no evidence that it has ever been common. One hypothesis that has been offered is that the smoke of firewood caused environmental toxins to accumulate in the placenta, leading to harmful health outcomes for prehistoric mothers who stayed close to the community hearth and ate their placentas. However, there is no direct evidence for a taboo against placentophagy in human myth. The shift away from placentophagy may have occurred over one million years before present. It may have been the consequence of a more aquatic lifestyle, in agreement with the absence of placentophagy in aquatic mammals (cetacea, pinnipeds and sirenia).

Human placenta has been used traditionally in Chinese medicine, though the mother is not identified as the recipient of these treatments. A sixteenth-century Chinese medical text, the Compendium of Materia Medica, states in a section on medical uses of the placenta that, "when a woman in Liuqiu has a baby, the placenta is eaten", and that in Bagui, "the placenta of a boy is specially prepared and eaten by the mother's family and relatives." Another Chinese medical text, the Great Pharmacopoeia of 1596, recommends placental tissue mixed with human milk to help overcome the effects of qi exhaustion. Dried, powdered placenta would be stirred into three wine-cups of milk to make a Connected Destiny Elixir. The elixir would be warmed in sunlight, then taken as treatment. It is not known exactly how traditional this remedy was, nor exactly how far back it dates.