He's not suggesting new parents pause in the delivery room to whip up a placenta sandwich. But neuroscientist Mark Kristal says human mothers might be missing out on the benefits other mammals receive from gobbling up their afterbirth. With luck, there might be a way for us to take advantage of placenta power that's not totally disgusting.
Mark Kristal is a professor at the University of Buffalo who's been studying the practice of placenta eating--or placentophagia, if you want to bring it up in polite company--for more than 40 years. His interest in the subject sprang from his study of maternal behaviors in mammals giving birth. "I had the field to myself," he said in an email.
And he knows it's gross. "Unfortunately, people often ask me what my research is on during dinner," he says. "It always gets a laugh (and a gag)."
Humans, with the exception of some ...
