On the season premiere of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," it was revealed that the pregnant reality star will be expecting a baby girl with boyfriend Kanye West. It was also revealed that Kim Kardashian is interested in eating her own placenta to maintain "her good looks," the Huffington Post reports.
"Don't you think it makes you look younger?" she asked the doctor during the episode in which he responded saying that there are some people who believe in it and that there are cookbooks on how to eat placentas.
"Yuck!" the reality star's mom, Kris, said. "I don't think we're going to be eating the fountain of youth, if you know what I mean."
"I really want to do it," the star insisted.
This may sound a bit strange but eating a placenta after giving birth is not that uncommon. According to the Las Vegas Sun, University of Las Vegas (UNLV) professor Daniel Benyshek and doctoral student Sharon Young are researching "maternal human placentophagy, the practice of mothers consuming their placenta."
The paper reports that the practice of mothers ingesting their placentas after giving birth is a growing trend in the United States, especially in Southern Nevada, "home to one of the foremost placenta encapsulation specialists in the world."
Benyshek told the paper he first heard of the trend from a woman named Jodi Selander, who launched a business in Nevada of converting placenta into pills.
"I had never heard of human placentophagia (before I met Selander), but I was fascinated," he told the newspaper. "There is very limited research on this topic and so many questions."
Through their research Benyshek and Young discovered that camels and humans are the only mammals on land that do not eat their placenta; in traditional Chinese medicine, men ingest "dried placenta medicine" to boost their energy; about 100 to 200 pills can be produced from a single placenta; the placenta is known to contain such nutrients as iron and "traces of hormones such as progesterone, oxytocin, testosterone and estrogen;" and there are some woman who choose to cook their placenta in food, blend it into a smoothie and eat it raw.
Kardashian is not the only celebrity mom to consider eating her placenta. According to the Huffington Post, January Jones and Holly Madison also expressed their interest in the trend.
In an interview with People magazine, Jones said placenta capsulation is one of her secrets to keeping her energy high.
"Your placenta gets dehydrated and made into vitamins," Jones told the magazine. "It's something I was very hesitant about, but we're the only mammals who don't ingest our own placenta... It's not witch-crafty or anything! I suggest it to all moms!"
