Food Freedom Group – by Dr. Mercola
Although not considered a favorite of the Western palate, organ meats such as liver and heart are the superfoods of the animal kingdom and are some of the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat.
Dr. Weston Price traveled the world studying diets of traditional cultures and found organ meats were nearly universally prized, primarily for their incomparable nutrient content.
Organ meats from grass-fed animals are safe and rich in high quality amino acids, fat, B vitamins and B12, CoQ10, minerals, and “fat-soluble activators” (vitamins A, D and K), important for mineral absorption.
Organ meats are extremely high in natural vitamin A, which is crucial for your health and may even prevent birth defects; unlike synthetic vitamin A, you cannot become toxic from natural vitamin A.
Liver is one of the most nutritionally dense foods in existence and nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A; liver is also abundant in iron, choline, copper, folic acid, B vitamins, purines and natural cholesterol.
The consumption of organ meats has fallen out of favor in the West, which may be a mixed blessing. Liver, kidney, heart and other animal organs from organically raised, grass-fed animals are some of the most nutrient-rich foods you can eat.
Unfortunately, that’s not how most food animals are raised these days. In today’s world of high calorie/high carbohydrate but low nutrient foods, most people would benefit greatly from adding these superfoods back into their diet.
However, I advise against eating organ meats from animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The diets, veterinary drugs and living conditions of such animals are not likely to result in healthy organs, so be sure to find out where the organs came from, should you decide to pick some up at your local grocer.
Many traditional cultures and their medicine men—including Native Americans—believe that eating the organs from a healthy animal supports the organs of the eater.
For example, a traditional way of treating a person with a weak heart was to feed the person the heart of a healthy animal. Similarly, eating the brains of a healthy animal was believed to support clear thinking, and animal kidneys were fed to people suffering from urinary maladies.
There are countless reports about the success of these types of traditional practices. We can thank Dr. Weston A. Price for an enormous body of research about the health benefits of traditional diets.
The ‘Isaac Newton of Nutrition’
Dr. Weston A. Price was a Cleveland dentist who has been called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition.” Dr. Price traveled all over the world studying the dietary practices of healthy people from traditional cultures.
What he found was that nearly every culture placed a high value on consuming animals in their entirety, making use of the organs, blood, bones, and everything else—a far cry from Western culinary snobbery, which pretty much limits animal foods to muscle tissue and nothing else.
Traditional preparations involve a good deal of work in terms of cleaning, trimming, soaking, pounding and so on because membranes, blood vessels and other inedible parts must be removed from animal organs before they can be consumed, requiring significant time and labor. Why did they bother with all of this work?
They knew that eating these organs would support the natural functioning of their bodies. And they were right—the nutritional benefits of organ meats are now being confirmed by modern science.
Organ meat is a nutritional powerhouse, loaded with vitamins, minerals, amino acids and other compounds vital to your health. Liver in particular is packed with nutrients, which is why predatory animals eat it first and why it has been so highly prized throughout history.
Unfortunately, organ meats have been unfairly demonized in the West thanks to some persistent dietary myths, including beliefs that animal fat and cholesterol are bad for your health. Nothing could be farther from the truth!
Dr. Price, who studied this extensively, found that native cultures who maintained traditional diets—whole foods from plants and animals—had excellent teeth and were free of the chronic diseases plaguing society today. They experienced very little cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental illness, or even birth defects.3 But why? What accounts for such drastic health differences?
So that’s what the Syrian Rebels were doing by eating the organs of their enemies? Now it makes sense.
Seriously though, if you’ve never tried fried chicken hearts and gizzards (or livers), they are really pretty good.