Eating “Snout to Tail” – A Terrifying Experiment

Self-experimentation is essential for discovering what works for you and what doesn’t.

You can read about theory all day, but if it doesn’t work to give you the results you want, you’d better ditch it.

Despite having spent the majority of the past 10 years obsessing over health, trying new things periodically to shift my paradigm, every now and then I get into a slump.

No longer.

2011 is the year of self-experimentation, and you lucky readers get to be entertained (and educated, I hope) by watching me try new things, all in the name of health, fitness, and wellness.

This month, I will be confronting a lifelong conditioned bias… and eating offal every day for four weeks.

(Pssst… “offal” is a friendly way of saying “organ meats.”)

Why Would I Do Such a Thing?

Ewwwwww, gross! Right?

As it turns out, the restriction of meat consumption to only muscle tissue is a relatively recent phenomenon, found primarily in the U.S. Most people in our society are raised from day one to believe that “organ foods are disgusting,” without really confronting the fact that it’s no more repulsive than consuming muscle meat.

From Scottish haggis to French pâté, German liverwurst to Cantonese dim sum, we Americans are pretty much alone in eschewing offal (except in the South, where chicken gizzards and others are regularly consumed).

In the animal kingdom as well, carnivores (and omnivores) will always consume the bone marrow and organs of their prey first, often leaving the muscle meat to rot during times of plenty.

Although correlation does not imply causation, I’m always eager to learn more of the possible links between diseases of civilization such as obesity and heart disease and our modern lives. And if people started getting sicker and fatter once they made the shift away from organ meats, well then that sounds like something worth trying!

The Health Benefits

Guess what? It turns out that organ meats are absolutely jacked up with beneficial nutrients. Say goodbye to your daily multivitamin, and just start eating some offal instead.

Liver in particular is the storehouse for a massive amount of nutritious vitamins and minerals, including, but not limited to, vitamins A and B, iron, and the recently-trendy CoQ10.

In his essential book, Nutrition and Physical Regeneration, Weston A. Price noted that most healthy traditional cultures prized organ meats, and often successfully used them to treat injuries and diseases. You could say that they are the original “superfood.”

My Experience

I’ve been Paleo-ish for more than a year now, and decided last spring that, in the spirit of the philosophy, I should add more organ meats into my diet. I started with the classic liver and onions.

It did not go so great.

On the one hand, I loved the flavor and texture. Much smoother than muscle meat.

But on the other hand, I just couldn’t get over the “ew, gross” factor, could hardly choke any of it down, and threw the remainder of it away.

The Challenge

This whole experiment was inspired by The 2011 Paleo Challenge over at Hunter-Gatherer, but I wanted to take things to the next level.

And so, in the same spirit that compelled me to prepare a week’s worth of food with less than $50 in fewer than 3 hours, I’m going to try to get over my fear of offal.

Starting January 3rd (this past Monday), I will eat organ meat, in some shape or form every day for four weeks.

I’m not going to put a “volume” goal on it, because I honestly can’t predict how much I’ll be able to stomach, particularly in the beginning. As long as I try something, I’ll chalk it up as a success.

My plan is to start out with pâté, and move on to less-processed organ meats such as liver afterward.

Do you have any favorite organ meats? Consider me your human guinea pig, cuz I’ll try anything you throw at me. Honestly, I’m looking for more ideas, because the thought of eating liver every day for a month seems kinda boring to me. Since I live in a big city, I also have access to pretty much everything.

Let me know in the comments if there’s anything else you’d like to see me try!

Tagged as: offal