Is eating organ meats worth the hype?

Short Answer – absolutely, yes. Long Answer – keep reading!

Today’s Local Business Highlight, Synergos Farms, is a wonderful resource to buy organ meat from and gain lots of helpful knowledge and recipes from. They, along with our other farm/ranches at the Grub farmers markets, are such a wonderful resource for high quality, humanely raised organ meat and also a wide variety of meat cuts, in general. A great way to dip your toe in consuming nutrient rich organ meat is to buy ground ancestral beef. I add it into pasta sauce, soups, tacos and chili.

HISTORICAL ORIGINS

Traditional diets have incorporated organ meats for thousands of years. Though their consumption in the U.S. fell out of favor after WWII, hunter-gatherer cultures intuitively recognized how nutrient dense organ meats are, and often preferentially reserved them for what they perceived as the highest echelons of society (for instance, elders, leaders, pregnant women, couples attempting to conceive).

ANCESTRAL FOOD

Organ meats (offal) such as heart, kidney, liver, pancreas, spleen, thymus, were all prized in ancestral cultures - in-fact, after a kill, the muscle meat (what we eat today) was essentially discarded--thrown to the dogs. Even in the wild, predators like wolves will often tear open their prey’s abdominal cavity and first devour the vital organs, demonstrating an instinctual recognition of the superior nutrient density of the organ meats.

CONTEMPORARY POPULATIONS

The phenomenon is illustrated by the famed dentist Weston A. Price, who traveled the world studying indigenous cultures and documented his findings in “Nutrition & Physical Degeneration”

Price noted that one commonality uniting the hunter-gatherer populations he studied--all of which were virtually free of the long latency, chronic, degenerative diseases that plague modernity--is that they universally prized and consumed organ meats.

TRADITIONAL CONSUMPTION

The Maasai in Kenya and Northern Tanzania historically subsisted on the milk, meat, and blood of cows
Tribes of the Outer Herbides liberally included cod’s liver and cod’s head in their diets
Australian Aboriginal peoples ate the small fat depots, bone marrow, stomach contents, organ meats, periotneal fluid and blood of wallaby, kangaroo, and other rodents
Plains tribes would take the raw liver and plunge it into the bile for its bitter medicine and reservoir of nutrition
Along with ample blubber, traditional Inuit of the Artic ate the livers of caribou, seal, and fish
Europeans during the 17th and 18th century documented that many indigenous Native American communities prized the fattiest parts of meat and fish, including the organ meats and bone marrow, over muscle cuts
S. C. Gwynne writes how Comanche “Children would rush up to a freshly killed animal, begging for its liver and gallbladder.”

NURTIENT DENSITY

Ancient and contemporary foraging cultures innately recognized what modern scientific studies have validated today: Organ meats are, ounce for ounce, the most nutrient dense foods on the planet:

Liver is one of the highest known sources of retinol (active, preformed form of vitamin A)
Spleen is the richest source of bioavailable heme iron
Heart is rich in CoQ10, contains twice the collagen and elastin as muscle meat
Kidney is the third richest source of vitamin B12

ISN’T THE LIVER A FILTER?

One common misconception is that the liver is a filter. The liver is NOT a filter according to its conventional definition (something that removes toxins by storing or accumulating them itself). The liver does not filter toxins from the blood. Rather, the liver transforms toxins to render them less toxic and more readily excreted, thus facilitating their elimination in the feces and urine…NOT their retention in the liver.

CONCLUSIONS

Organ meats represent the most concentrated source of just about every nutrient
To deny their utility in the human diet is to discard the wisdom of contemporary indigenous cultures and traditional hunter-gatherer populations
Modern science is confirming the superior nutrient density of organ meats
Quality of organ meats matters--choose grass-fed, pasture-raised, organic, local when possible and consume a variety

Come shop the following vendors at each of our markets to stock up on organ meat and high quality typical meat cuts as well!

Clawtel Ranch offers fresh seafood, pickled jalapeños and carrots, and spices. Our signature flavors of pickles, peppers, spices and herbs pair perfectly alongside our seafood products or your go to favorite meals.

Daily Catch takes great pride in the quality and freshness the local seafood market has to offer. They offer a wide variety of seafood including fresh sustainable fish, shrimp, squid, shellfish, crabs, lobster, scallops and much more.

Driftwood Meadows began their journey as a family committed to putting better food on their table, food that comes from animals raised on pasture without the use of hormones or antibiotics. Located in Centerville, Driftwood provides pasture raised pork, chicken, and eggs.

Erbe Ranch is a family owned farm located in Cat Spring, Texas raising grass-fed beef, pastured poultry and pastured pork. The property has been in Farmer Brian’s family for over one hundred thirty five years.

Gold Ring Wagyu is a producer and supplier of Wagyu beef. It is owned and operated by the Kern family in the small community of Fields Store, TX, located an hour NorthWest of Houston. Having been in the cattle business for generations, Gold Ring’s Wagyu cattle are pasture-raised, grain-finished, hormone-free, and antibiotic free.

Regen Ranch is a woman owned and run ranch in Oakwood, Texas. With the goal of providing clean food, Christine sells grass fed beef & lamb, pasture raised turkey, and farm fresh eggs.

Synergos is a thriving healthy farm community, synergistically growing food, allowing all things to grow naturally. Located in Santa Fe, Texas, Synergos focuses on regenerative practices that support healthy soil, plants, and animals.

Wagyuru sells gourmet Wagyu beef from animals that they raise on their ranch in Texas to retail customers, butcher shops, grocery stores, and restaurants in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area. They pride ourselves on being Wagyu experts, and hold themselves to a high standard in everything they do.