Actress eats placenta
Jones’s secret to staying high energy through the grueling shooting schedule? “I have a great doula who makes sure I’m eating well, with vitamins and teas, and with placenta capsulation.”
You read right: Jones is eating her own placenta. “Your placenta gets dehydrated and made into vitamins,” she explains. “It’s something I was very hesitant about, but we’re the only mammals who don’t ingest our own placentas.”
Jones has taken the capsules every day since right after she had her son, and also anytime she feels tired or down. Jones insists, “It’s not witch-crafty or anything! I suggest it to all moms!”
~ People magazine, March 23, reporting on Mad Men actress January Jones’ post-partum recovery regimen, which includes ingesting her own placenta. Read more on the new fad at ABC News.

Yeah we are the only mammals that don’t eat our own placenta’s because the others are animals and we are human and God says it’s cannibalism. Gross.
I sent my husband out to Taco Bell.
i think its gross but probally very healthy and how is it cannibilism shes not eating her baby!! by the way humans are animals too we belong to the human species
As long as we are pro-lifers, we must teach the truth of science, nature, and morality to the world.
Scientific fact: She is not eating her own placenta. The placenta is an organ of the developing child. She is eating her child’s placenta.
As disgusting as this sounds, the placenta is discarded by the child and the mother after birth. The organ has done its job. There is nothing morally wrong with finding a good use for the used placenta, just as we have discovered cures from the stem cells present in umbilical cord blood.
Although somehow, I think we could do better than to freeze-dry and encapsulate the ground organ.
Isn’t that the very thing we are trying to get away from with animals that we eat (chickens eating chicken bone meal and mad cow disease)? Blood transfusions and digestion are definitely different. To each his own I guess. Time will tell if it’s a good idea or not.
I agree with Del: gross, but there is a scientific basis for defending this. Having said that, my first reaction is definitely “Ulch!” :P
*philosoraptor moment*
Would a vegan be able to eat their own placenta and still be a vegan?
(I’ve been debating vegetarians/vegans since I was in high school-it’s another one of my Biology pet peeves-so I’m constantly trying to come up with questions to rattle their cages. This is one of the more tame questions I’ve come up with though. :3 )
Yeah, my first reaction when I found out about this was also “Eeeuuuu”… But then… I researched it, and what do you know – placenta IS amazingly rich in vitamins, microelements and other goodies. Women who used it report shorter recovery times, increased milk supply and better general wellbeing. Having said that – I would NEVER cook and eat the placenta, like some people do (yep, I’ve seen a documentary about it, they even make placenta smoothies…), but dried and in a capsule form is definitely something I can deal with. If I have another baby, I’ll def look into encapsulating the placenta.
Vita–great comment! I am sitting here, literally drinking V-8 when I read the part about the smoothies. LOL! ;)
Why oh why did I have to read this right before lunch.
Sorry Del, you’re wrong. The placenta is in fact an organ of the child. As a morula and blastocyst the cells differentiate and a portion becomes the embryo and the other portion becomes the placenta.Though it embeds in the wall of the uterus, it is wholey the child’s cells that make up the placenta.
Uh, no, nina. We are NOT animals:
“And God said let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Genesis 1:26 (KJV)
God made us MORE IMPORTANT than animals. He didn’t send His only son to die for animals.
We’re in Kingdom Animalia…
ElizabethG…I thought that was what Del said? You’re disagreeing, but you’re saying the same thing. @_@
When I was in 1st or 2nd grade, there was a kid who ate his own boogers.
Doug, I’m sure their was one in every class at that age.
This totally freaks me out. But, I suffered PPD after the birth of my daughter. It was awful. I literally didn’t even like her for the first 2 months of her life, that’s how awful it was. If something like this, that didn’t pose any harm to my health, could help me not feel that way again, I’d try it.
“…but we’re the only mammals who don’t ingest our own placentas.”
Without doing any research on this statement I suspect that the statement is false. For example, would baleen whales eat their own placenta? I think this comment needs to be more thoroughly investigated by everyone. I think this is some new Hollywood fad. I have heard that eating brain is extremely healthy (Hannibal said this I believe), but I am not eating it!! Let’s get Mikey!!!
I think we need Randall to do a commentary on the Nasty January Jones.
Who would win: Honey Badger vs. January Jones?
If I ever was a contestant on Fear Factor and Ms. Jones showed up as my competitor I would just turn around and walk off the set.
xalisae says:
ElizabethG…I thought that was what Del said? You’re disagreeing, but you’re saying the same thing. @_@
================================
Although one of us could be mistaken….
nina says:
“i think its gross but probally very healthy and how is it cannibilism shes not eating her baby!! by the way humans are animals too we belong to the human species”
I suppose humans could be included in the defintion of ‘mammals’.
But even tho some stupid humans indulge in the amoral behavior of animals they are still humans.
Tyler says
“I have heard that eating brain is extremely healthy (Hannibal said this I believe), but I am not eating it!”
I confess to occasionally watching snippets PBS and there was a program about ‘mad cow disease’ [Not to be confused with PMS] researchers determined that a cannibalistic tribes practice of dining on their dead enemies brains was producing ‘mad cow disease’ like symptoms in the brain eaters.
Next thing you know some wacko will be trumpeting the benefits of drinking his/her own urine.
Speaking of eating, I guess some ‘black’ entertainer did a commercial for a fried chicken franchise and the PC SWAT team responded in force and cited the both the entertainer and the franchise for perpetuating racial stereotypes.
Another black entertainer responded, ” I don’t care what them folks say. My wife’s fried chicken is so good if you put a piece on top of my head, my tongue would beat me to death trying to reach it.”
My grandma’s fried chicken was just as good.
There’s Ken with his racial comments again even though they are COMPLETELY not related. Not racist, huh?
I think placenta encapsulation is pretty cool and I would like to try it. No need to shame women for either choice though – I thought there was nothing gross about childbirth?
I suppose humans could be included in the defintion of ‘mammals’.
But even tho some stupid humans indulge in the amoral behavior of animals they are still humans.
ken,
I’m surprised at you! That was pretty well-said. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging our place in the animal kingdom as long as we remain mindful that because we have the capacity to remain mindful, our actions should not mimic those of the animal kingdom at large.
I had heard about this long ago before I was even married, & how women would often cook (I think that’s what I heard) & eat the placenta after giving birth since it contained so many nutrients & stuff that was beneficial to both mom & child. I don’t know the science of it in detail, but why not? May not be for everyone, but why not put it to good use?
Lol, I am very sorry. I misread and fired fast. In my defense and I am both early pregnant and sick with a nasty GI bug so I’m not at my best. Probably really should take that as a cue to stay quiet till I’m doing better. Thanks for being gentle on me
No worries. CONGRATS!!!
You leave us vegetarians alone X!!!
The thought of people eating placenta makes me honestly gag. I don’t see a moral or ethical problem with it. But it still freaks me out.
Thank you for clarifying that for me! I’ve always wondered stuff like that.
Eating meat is the natural order! Humans have eyes in a predatory configuration for depth perception to aid in hunting meat, and we have slicing and shredding teeth for eating meat as well as flat grinding teeth for vegetation. The natural way is for us to be omnivorous.
I still <3 you though. :P
Hey, it’s a free country. Anyway, if it is not specifically unhealthy, I don’t see the problem. Could be a good idea. it certainly deserves to be discussed. Seems reasonable even if not everyone is going to want to do it. But then not everyone wants to breastfeed and we all know that it is healthy.
Hey, where’s Heather? She might want to know that David Carradine and Barbara Hershey either did or were planning to eat their child’s placenta.
Oh course, Carradine wound up hanging in a closet in a compromising position, so he might not be the best poster boy for this practice. :)
Next thing you know some wacko will be trumpeting the benefits of drinking his/her own urine.
Umm… They already do! Watched a documentary about people on extreme diets (like only eating raw vegetables and stuff)and one of them was drinking a glass of her own urine every morning.
I cant remember the benefits of it, but my mum used to drink it as well when she was on some super strict grain only diet.
I would NEVER do it though, unless they give me a million or threaten to shoot me or smt…
Not animalistic. Make use of a the placenta any way you can if it can help. The baby is done with it anyway. Ewwws and yucks do not qualify as scientific or moral reasons not to.
My doula took my placenta to the police dog training facility nearby–they use it to train the police dogs to sniff out…what? Human blood? Placentas? Not sure what exactly they do with it, but police dogs sound good to me!
I don’t really have a problem with this. I know people who have done it before. I know one woman who didn’t do it after her first child but did after her second, and she said she felt much more emotionally balanced and energetic after her second child.
I also have heard of women taking placenta pills during menopause.
It can sound totally wacky and gross. But really, we take random crap in pills all the time and don’t even give it a second thought – to be honest I’m more comfortable at face value with the squickiness of a placenta pill than with the synthetic cocktail blend of, say, the antidepressants that some of my friends went on post-partum.
For the record this isn’t a ‘new fad’ in Hollywood. Placental consumption (in any form] is very, very old and was practiced by most societies at one point in time or another. It’s becoming more popular today because of the general re-emergence of midwives, doulas, non-medicated births, and home births (since getting the hospital to hand over the placenta after birth can be down right impossible). Freeze dried and crushed for incapsilation is considered perferable to cooking because there is no heat to break down the various ‘good’ stuff found in the placenta. But some people cook it, dry and encapsilate it, or even eat it raw. I haven’t personally done it, and I don’t think I would, I would prefer to donate mine for research or teaching, but I know people who have and they have reported many good side effects from it. It *is*, by strict definition cannibalism, but it’s ‘harmless’ cannibalism since the organ has no further use and has been discarded by it’s person (the baby). And while *most* mammals do eat the placenta, it is in fact a fallacy to say they *all* do (it’s also false to say mammals except humans since there are literally millions of moms all over the world who do ingest the placenta).
Jespren, I wish Jill would move your comment to be the first one! Very educational.
I don’t really like seeing this article posted on a pro-life website, as if there is something anti-life about placenta consumption.
After my homebirth, my brother jokingly asked if I’d saved the placenta. We actually did, and had it in the freezer until we could plant it in the yard with a new fruit tree. I teased/shocked him with my reply, “Yeah, it’s in the freezer and we’ll make it into soup in a few weeks.” No placenta soup for me, but I would consider capsules.
It just came to me after my morning coffee.
The college professor/medical doctor who made himself an object of derision with the feministas by authoring an article about the manifold benefits of ‘semen’ to the daughters of Eve.
Too bad there is no such thing as ‘sewomen’.
That might have made the article more palatable to feministas.
Thank you Sandy :) what a lovely complement. I always liked the tree (or rosebush) option, but since we aren’t at a home we plan on being in for years it would be hard for me to leave a ‘family’ tree behind. I donated my 1st (from a homebirth) to the local midwife college but sadly my 2nd went to waste. Tried to donate it but by the time the hospital got it’s ducks in a row on how the research team wanted it preserved it was too ‘old’ to do so (had to be chilled within 30 minutes of birth and mine was an early am birth and it was like 90 minutes before someone could figure out what they were supposed to do with it). My 3rd birth is a (planned) birth center birth and I expect I’ll donate it again to the local college.