Many animals eat their placenta after birth. Zoologists know this is to ward off predators, but when the "natural" birth movement took off in the 1960s, believers stated that if animals do it, it must be for a health reason and humans should also.

Ingesting the placenta has become a popular practice among moms, with celebrities like TV personality Kim Kardashian West and actress January Jones claiming that it helps boost energy and deal with postpartum depression.

A study has recently suggested that new mothers consuming placenta pills, following childbirth, will experience little to no effect on their post-partum mood, maternal bonding or fatigue.

When you're expecting your first baby, the amount of conflicting information on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting out there can be overwhelming. Should you breastfeed or use formula? Co-sleep or not? So many choices are fraught with controversy, but there's one decision that's now easier to make than ever, because there's even more evidence that women shouldn't be eating their placentas, in any form. It's true that many other mammals do so, but whether you're blending it into a smoothie or popping freeze-dried pills, placentophagy offers no benefits to humans, and it can actually be extremely dangerous for both mother and child.

Celebrity socialite Kim Kardashian West says it boosted her energy level. Mad Men’s January Jones touts it as a cure for postpartum depression. But does eating one’s placenta after birth—an apparently growing practice around the globe—actually confer any health benefits? Not really, according to the first in-depth analyses of the practice.

When Amber Turner was about 13, her parents bought her a telescope for Christmas. She’d check out the stars and wonder what was up there.

Amber Turner tried to balance working and going to school full time, but when she passed out in her economics class from exhaustion, she knew it wasn’t possible. “I realized I was lost when I was working at McDonald’s trying to pay my tuition,” Turner said. “I thought: I don’t like what I’m studying enough to be this exhausted. If I’m going to work that much, I want to love what I’m doing.”

As influential celebrities like Kim Kardashian and January Jones have done it just like other mammal species, it has become popular for new mothers to eat their placentas after giving birth. Businesses have even capitalized on the trend by offering freeze-dried placenta pills to the market.