juushika

Placenta is one of the subjects that Schutt tackles in Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History, so as it happens I have an answer to this question! Cannibalism definitions/research makes a hard distinction between consuming nails/mucus/etc as "obviously not cannibalism" and consuming a foot as "absolutely cannibalism," and then place things like consuming the placenta as "probably cannibalism??"

I say "things like consuming the placenta" as if there were other things which are shed naturally, doesn't require death or disfigurement, but is made of people, and there really isn't anything else like that, which is what makes the placenta case a weird middle ground. But in human history there's non-incidental examples of eating parts of people (no death; yes disfigurement) or, now, of eating your amputated foot—which is the nearest equivalent, and is what tips the placenta cannibalism-ward. The other tipping point is that there's examples in non-human animals of parents creating flesh for babies to consume. Is this a natural part of procreation/rearing? yes! (just like eating the placenta, in non-human animals.) Is it also cannibalism? obviously yes! So probably placentophagy can be considered cannibalism.

Schutt tries placenta in the book, btw, and describes it as consistency of veal; taste of dark red meat, organ meat. Like chicken gizzards.