Eating Placenta

Just gave birth? Meet a professional chef who will prepare your discarded organ for consumption. Bon appetit! (Time)

Some people bury their child’s afterbirth, or placenta, in the garden and plant a tree. Some make art prints by pressing the fresh placenta onto canvas. And some hire a placenta chef to come to their home to cook the placenta, freeze-dry it and turn it into capsules to ward off postpartum depression and increase milk supply.

Time reporter and new father Joel Stein walks us through this very process with graphic images of fresh, juicy placenta, well-cooked placenta and the final product of tastefully packaged capsules and a freeze-dried umbilical cord, fashioned into a heart shape.

From behind the camera, the bemused Stein interviews the chef in action, and provides humorous commentary -- calling the afterbirth specialist “the placenta lady,” suggesting that his wife should really eat the thing whole “like a steak,” and wondering if the house will still reek of cooked placenta when his wife and new baby come home from the hospital.

Warning: This video may not be for the squeamish!

CHANNEL: TIME

Length: 4:23

Reporter/Camera: Joel Stein
Editor: Vanessa Kaneshiro

VIEW: http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=27457107001

SEE ALSO:

“Afterbirth: It's What's For Dinner”
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1908194,00.html