Turns Out, Eating Placenta Is Basically Useless
So you can stop doing that now.


Remember when everyone would go on and on about how good it was for new mothers to eat their leftover placentas because it helped with postpartum depression and recovery after childbirth and pain relief and was basically magic? Remember when super famous people like Kourtney Kardashian and Gaby Hoffmann and January Jones would say things like, "it's not gross or witchcrafty (opens in new tab)" and encouraged others to either take dehydrated placenta pills or mix up some placenta into delicious smoothies?
Yeah, maybe not. A study by researchers at Northwestern University (opens in new tab) found that there are no benefits from digesting placenta. None. Nada. There were also no real detriments, if that makes you feel better. (Though the study notes that not a ton of research has been put into looking at the risks...so, way to go, science.)
Moral of the story? Celebrities are not doctors. And maybe talk to your doctor before eating something that you pushed out of your own body.
Samantha Leal is the Deputy Editor at Well+Good, where she spends most of her day thinking of new ideas across platforms, bringing on new writers, overseeing the day-to-day of the website, and working with the awesome team to produce the best stories and packages. Before W+G, she was the Senior Web Editor for Marie Claire and the Deputy Editor for Latina.com, with bylines all over the internet. Graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University with a minor in African history, she’s written everything from travel guides to political op-eds to wine explainers (currently enrolled in the WSET program) to celebrity profiles. Find her online pretty much everywhere @samanthajoleal.
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