If you thought not allowing Katie Holmes to scream her pain out during childbirth was gross, chew on this one. In an interview to a leading men's magazine, Hollywood's most tiresome tabloid target Tom Cruise has said that he would eat fiancée Katie Holmes' placenta after the birth of the child.
“I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there,” he said. He, however, backtracked when told that the snack might prove too big to finish. “OK, maybe I won't,” he said.
The practice of eating placenta is not a new one and many remote tribes are known to devour the childbirth by-product. Some cultures also believe the snack can make a woman fertile. The practice, called placentophagy, is also believed to alleviate postpartum depression if practiced by the new mother. The Chinese use human placenta in the manufacture of traditional medicines as well.
Placentophagy is common in mammals that eat the placenta of their young after childbirth. The afterbirth product is rich in prostaglandins and also contains oxytocin that eases postpartum depression.
While not many Westerners and modern people go for a placenta meal, many choose to frame it or store it, with celebrity couple Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster burying it in their garden. In a bizarre incident, British celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had fried placenta with garlic on his television show in 1998 and made his guests, including the parents of the baby whose placenta it was, take a bite.
Meanwhile, Hollywood watchers have dismissed Cruise's latest assertion as just another stunt to stay in the news. What the 43-year-old
War of the Worlds star plans to do to garner publicity after the baby is born remains to be seen.
