Placenta Smoothie Maker Surprised Health Dept. Isn’t Okay With Her Home Business

smoothies-on-a-counterYou’ve heard about the benefits of eating your placenta via pills and smoothies, but have you ever considered capitalizing on the trend and starting your very own home business? One UK woman did and now she’s under investigation by public health officials. The Guardian reports Kathryn Beale, who’s been running an unregulated placenta smoothie home business for the past two years, agreed to shut down this week pending a health inspection.

Beale’s business originally centered around dehydrating placentas, grinding them up, and converting them into pills, but her unbridled entrepreneurial spirit eventually led her to smoothie town. Her placenta smoothies are a delicate blend of water, bananas, organic berries, and an eight-centimeter strip of placenta provided by the customer. Beale claims they’re so delicious, you won’t believe it’s an organ!

”I’d say about 40% of women who come to me to have their placenta made into pills also have a smoothie,” said Beale. ”You honestly can’t taste the placenta all the mums tell me it just tastes like fruit. There’s considerably more fruit in each smoothie than there is placenta.”

Of course, taste isn’t the issue. The issue is whether or not the products she’s providing are safe for consumption. In response to safety concerns, Beale defended herself, stating she only allows mothers to consume their own placenta (yay?), she thoroughly sterilizes her equipment, and she follows a strict hygiene code that she apparently made up since she has no official recognition.

Investigators were tipped off to Beale’s shenanigans by an anonymous person who contacted the health council seeking her hygiene rating, only to find out she doesn’t have one. Officials then sought a hygiene emergency prohibition order and Beale agreed to temporarily back away from the blender, though she stands by her assertions that her smoothies are 100% safe for consumption and hugely beneficial to new moms.

”The health benefits are great. After giving birth, most mums are anemic to some extent, and placenta is full of iron, so it helps with that. It also helps with postnatal depression, baby blues and milk production,” Beale said.

She also notes that animals eat their placenta all the time and celebrities are super into it, which is reassuring since I take all my health advice from wolves, Kourtney Kardashian, and unlicensed placenta smoothie makers.

Beale’s kitchen smoothies may very well be amazing, but that doesn’t change the fact that what she’s been doing for the past two years is totally irresponsible. She’s using basic kitchen equipment in her own home to manufacture products made from an internal organ for human consumption. Unless she is adhering to some industry-level sanitation standards or setting everything on fire between batches, I’m going to say that whole situation sounds like a big, fat nope. Her business might be small, but that doesn’t mean she’s exempt from keeping people safe.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

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