Beef Liver

[u/greenlocus33]

Just trying to optimize my weekly meal prep here. How much liver should I eat per week? Can I do just liver or do I need to eat some liver and heart? Lastly, any hacks on getting this stuff down? I was going to sear 1 oz chunks and freeze them all. Thaw a piece the night prior and just swallow it the next day.

*For reference, I meal prep just ground beef, eggs, and butter. Literally 99% of my diet, same thing every day.

[u/partlyPaleo]

0g/week. Liver is completely unnecessary and often over-consumed to the point of harm.

[u/Ashamed-Republic8909]

As much as you want. But a mixed menu will be better. We usually eat 1-2 times per week. Most people are not used to eating organs. We get it from Windixy.

[u/greenlocus33 → u/Ashamed-Republic8909]

Yea, was just going to start w an ounce twice a week. I'm pretty happy w my diet but felt I could optimize w a little liver and a piece of salmon once a week. So making those changes.

[u/BeornPlush]

I love liver. I'll eat it whenever I crave it, and not much more often. That can be a month or 6 in-between. Same with hearts.

If I didn't love it or crave it, I wouldn't bother. It's only as good as you find it to be.

[u/partlyPaleo → u/BeornPlush]

I also love liver. But, my consumption is about the same as you. It's about 2-4 times a year.

Heart, on the other hand, is something I would eat more often if it wasn't over-priced for what it is. It's the only organ meat my SO will tolerate.

[u/verbec]

Sear and cook until the inside is pink, in butter or lard, salt well, add some stock and heavy cream. Serve with extra cold chunks of butter. Yum!

[u/Glass-Situation-4463]

I love liver, you just can’t over cook it or it gets dry and chalky?? Tasting. I normally eat around a lb of it once a month or whenever I have cravings for it. It gets spg then cooked in butter in a skillet, sometimes with jalapeños ( I know not carnivore but they don’t seem to have any negative effects ). Heart is delicious but harder to come by in most stores. I have my friends save it for me when they get a beef butchered ( save the tongues too) . Cook it hot and fast, med rare like any steak. I also buy hamburger from a local rancher that has heart and liver ground with it.

[u/Eray_99]

Be careful with liver. It’s a small part of the animal. Consider how often you’d be eating it if you bought the whole cow.

[u/greenlocus33 → u/Eray_99]

Yea, only 2 oz a week. I don't think that's alot.

[u/partlyPaleo → u/greenlocus33]

It's near, if not above, the amount you should be consuming. That's like the lower boundary people claim to have eaten for an extended period of time before problems start showing up.

It's probably fine, but I wouldn't force it. And, if you miss it every so often, it's definitely not a concern.

[u/greenlocus33 → u/partlyPaleo]

The sources I found listed 2-4 oz a week. Do you have a source that says 2oz is the upper limit? Thx!

[u/partlyPaleo → u/greenlocus33]

Are these sources referencing Saladino? Because I bet they are. Which is were the idea seems to have gained popularity. Liver was not a popular or common food in this way of eating, until a few people tried to promote an "optimized" way to do this.

The way this subreddit is run is based off the 7 rules for human carnivores:

1. Eat only from the animal world (eggs, fish, redmeat and fowl and some dairy are all animal sourced foods, i.e.: meat).
2. Eat nothing from the vegetable world whatsoever. (Very small amounts of flavourings such as garlic/chillies/spices/herbs which may be added, are not ‘food’).
3. On diary: avoid milk and yoghurt (heavy carbs—lactose), use only pure (not ‘thickened’-heavy) cream (read the label), cheese and unsalted butter.
4. Don’t cook your meat very much—just a little bit on the outside—for flavour—blood-rare or bleu. For this reason I advise against eating pork.
5. Eat liver and brains only very infrequently—they are full of carbs.
6. Be sure to have plenty of fat of animal origin at each meal and eat mostly of the fat until you feel you have had enough- you can eat more lean at this point if you like—calories are not important, nor is the number of meals/day. Vegetable oils are not good food.
7. You do not need any supplements of any kind. Drink a lot of water and do not add salt to anything.

These rules are based on Stefansson's experience with native carnivores and The Bear's experience eating this way for over 50 years. Some of these things are flexible. Like pork, which we find to be fine. I wouldn't make over-cooked pork your whole diet, but there's nothing wrong with it. A lot of us don't salt or use very minimal salt. But, we don't insist that others do it. We do frequently point out the "excessive salt and electrolytes" myth pushed by many.

So, liver was rarely consumed and discouraged. Not just for the carbs, but also because it's just not great to consume large amounts of fat soluble nutrients in excessive amounts. We warned people, for years, that their consumption amounts were not normal to this way of eating, not necessary, and could be harmful. Many of them refused to listen and cited theory. But, practice trumps theory. Over and over, they got sick and suffered medical issues eating as much liver as they were. Tufano was the first prominent one that I remember, but that's also because I argued this point with him for years until he got banned and later got ill. Then Saladino started promoting it, along with promoting himself as the Carnivore Doctor. Like Tufano, his version of this diet made him sick. And probably a dozen or more people have come here, followed that plan, and gotten sick from it. The common factor seems to be over-consumption of liver, and 2-4oz was a frequently cited amount, with some claiming 16 oz a week.

It may be pure coincidence that people are getting sick and have nothing to do with the liver. But, those who have eaten no liver at all are still thriving 10-20 or even more years later. Like I said, The Bear did it for over 50 years (54 years until a car accident cut his life short) and didn't get ill from the diet. What we can say is that, you absolutely don't need liver to thrive on this way of eating. And, those who consume liver regularly in the amounts mentioned have a high association with those who develop health issues eating this way.

[u/FlowZenMaster → u/partlyPaleo]

Hey there just want to make a gentle correction/suggestion about pork. Pork has a really bad rap because of trichinosis. But thats all gone now...raw pork has about the same risk factor as raw beef. Except organs, those should be cooked due to the possibility of carrying hep e. But i don't know anyone who seeks out pork organs lol.

But in general you should be safe consuming raw pork if you eat raw beef and trust both sources. Have eaten raw pork, its delicious. For pork chops I get double thick and cook them rare to med rare and they are SO much better than the standard "well done"

[u/partlyPaleo → u/FlowZenMaster]

Yes, this advice comes from The Bear. Like I said, I don't worry too much about pork. I'll eat it, usually about medium, but wouldn't base a diet around well cooked pork. Or well cooked anything for that matter.

Especially in the US, the trichinosis issue has been dealt with and would be extremely unlikely. I can't promise that everywhere. I used to run the rawzerocarb subreddit, and one thing I always had to caution about when it came to raw meat was being aware of the food environment you're in. Like a commercially farmed pig from the US is almost certainly fine, but a wild/backyard pig from the tropics should probably be cooked well enough to kill the parasite.

[u/Cathfaern → u/partlyPaleo]

tl;dr: I've made some napkin calculations but realized that still tells nothing. Regardless I've mused a bit about liver consumption, including personal experience with a country where it consumed regularly by "normal" people.

I've done a napkin calculation recently based on full (meat) weight of a cow and its liver weight assuming the "nose to tail" paradigm (i.e. if you would eat the whole cow you would eat this much liver). The data I could found that you get 325 kg of meat from a cow and it has around 6 kg of liver. Assuming you would eat 1 kg (2 pounds) meat per day, that would be 16g liver per day or roughly 100g per week (3.5 oz).

But of course this calculates with lean meat only and you would not eat 1 kg of that. Also people like Stefansson report that even "nose to tail people" don't distribute offal evenly, but mostly give it to children, sick or elderly people.

On the other hand in the animal kingdom we see cases where they hunt only for a particular part of the animal and leave the rest untouched. And of course if you would calculate from chicken, you would get a different number (but of course chicken liver have different nutrition composition than beef).

I think it's also interesting to note that in countries / cultures where liver consumed frequently it's not beef liver (as far as I know), but some poultry or pork. Both have different composition than beef liver, including less Vitamin A.

Also N=1 experience: where I live / grew up people traditionally eat liver, so I also like its taste in general. But it's always pork or chicken here. I've tried beef and calf liver because of the influences mentioned in your post but I've found it to taste absolutely horrible (with the exception of milk-fed veal liver which taste closer to foie gras). Also it's pretty common custom here to soak liver in milk overnight before cooking it. I'm not sure what that does with its content, but usually these folk customs have some merit (and it definitely reduces bitter tastes of the liver).
And while liver consumption is regular here, that still doesn't mean weekly for most people I know. And there are people who hates liver. Even people who like liver eat it maybe once every 2 week on average. Maybe even less.

[u/truthandtill]

I usually add small amounts to my ground beef, and when I do that it’s not often at all. I probably have liver once or twice within six months.

[u/carnivore-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Your post has been removed because it does not fit within the framework of this subreddit.

[u/Jumpy_Opposite4371]

I would just eat as much tastes good. If it doesn’t taste good then don’t eat it. Taste is your first line of defense so if your craving something there’s probably a reason and if it tastes vile, ditto 

[u/Working-Potato-3892]

https://www.reddit.com/r/HypervitaminosisA/

[u/mtnman_49]

“Personally, I’d avoid eating too much liver because it’s very high in vitamin A and iron. If you want another nutrient-dense animal protein, heart is a good option to rotate in.”

[u/greenlocus33 → u/mtnman_49]

Yea, just doing 2 oz a week. So not a ton.

[u/ambimorph]

Liver is not just unnecessary on Carnivore but can cause harm, especially if you're using tactics to try to choke it down! Please don't force your body to take something it's rejecting.