Andrew Zimmern Eats Cow Placenta, Taking Afterbirth-As-Superfood Trend To A New Level

A new preview of next week’s Bizarre Foods episode shows Andrew Zimmern chowing on fresh cow placenta and colostrum–the milk a cow gives just after giving birth–taking the whole afterbirth-as-superfood trend to a level I’ve never seem before. At least once a year, a “trend” piece is written about women preserving and eating their own placentas; it’s not really a “trend” at this point, but gruesome-looking photos of placentas getting prepped for consumption are pretty much an irresistible lifestyle piece. (The latest example from the Daily Mail comes complete with photos of a dehydrator full of placenta slices…I care you to not click.) But cow’s placenta is a take on the trend I’ve never seen before.

Zimmern visits Sea Breeze Farm, near Seattle, where a cow is about to give birth. When she does, he rushes to the scene to witness the calf’s introduction to the world…then eats the just-excreted placenta. He seems understandably freaked out at first, explaining:

Being a complete rookie, it takes me some time to figure out which part of it to eat.

He pokes and prods the (extremely large) cow placenta, looking for the right place to sample from:

If I had to guess, this is probably the best eating. This stuff over here looks like it has amniotic fluid or something in there, but this looks like…food!

After a contemplating the taste (he says it tastes like poultry liver), he moves on to taste the mother cow’s colostrum, the milk that’s produced in the first 24 hours after a calf is born. Colostrum is nutrient-dense, and full of the antibodies, growth factors, and immune boosters that calves need to survive and grow; because of this, Zimmern dubs it ‘nature’s superfood.’

The episode airs on Monday, February 6 at 9pm ET, but you can watch Zimmern chowing on placenta over at Eater.

Photo: The Travel Channel