It's shockingly true. I don't think any solid numbers are available on how common it is, but it at least appears to be relatively common in out of hospital births (and is becoming a trend).
> This relatively modern phenomenon is practiced predominantly by white, middle class, married women in the global North, and has grown rapidly since the 1970s
> Whilst prevalence is difficult to estimate, placentophagy is known to be practiced in North America, Oceania and Europe, plus parts of Latin America, the Middle East and Asia and is apparently growing in popularity. In a 2018 study of a medical records dataset for births outside of hospitals containing 23,242 birth events in the United States, 30.8% of mothers consumed their placenta. From 2009 to 2015 Google searches for “placenta encapsulation” increased 100-fold.
> This relatively modern phenomenon is practiced predominantly by white, middle class, married women in the global North, and has grown rapidly since the 1970s
> Whilst prevalence is difficult to estimate, placentophagy is known to be practiced in North America, Oceania and Europe, plus parts of Latin America, the Middle East and Asia and is apparently growing in popularity. In a 2018 study of a medical records dataset for births outside of hospitals containing 23,242 birth events in the United States, 30.8% of mothers consumed their placenta. From 2009 to 2015 Google searches for “placenta encapsulation” increased 100-fold.
https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...