Throughout history, liver has reigned as the most important “sacred” food, as well as one of the most prized culinary ingredients.
Young warriors savored the liver after a kill. Even local lore of the modern-day Hadza hunter-gatherers in Africa dictates that the liver and other internal organs must be shared among all the men of the tribe. If a hunter refuses to do so, bad luck will fall upon the tribe.
The liver even rules in the animal kingdom. The alpha wild canine or feline eats the liver and heart first and leaves the muscle meat for the rest of the pack.
Surprisingly, throughout most of recorded time, humans have preferred liver over steak – even raw liver – as they view it as a source of great strength and having almost magical powers.
Yet, some cultures around the world value liver so highly, they don’t allow human hands to touch it. Rather, special sticks or spears must be used to move it.
And its value as a food goes way back… The Li-Chi, a handbook of rituals published during China’s Han era (202 B.C. to 220 A.D.), lists liver as one of the “Eight Delicacies,” or “Eight Treasures” for cooking.
As much as our ancestors, modern-day hunter-gatherers, wild animals and cultures around the world value liver, it’s largely shunned in the Western world – especially beef liver.
Westerners much prefer to eat muscle meat rather than nutrient-dense liver. As we’ll soon see, that means they may be missing out on one of nature’s greatest gifts…
Are You Missing Out on One of Nature’s Gifts?
In the Western world, people prefer to buy the plastic-wrapped beef muscle meats found in grocery meat cases, such as steaks and hamburgers.
You typically can’t even buy beef liver in grocery stores because of the low demand.
This is unfortunate for several reasons…
Beef liver contains the highest concentrations of vitamins and minerals of any source of animal-based nutrition.
Also, when you consume liver or other organ meats along with muscle meat, you compliment and help achieve the proper balance of amino acids.
Here’s why that matters… Take methionine for an example – an amino acid found in rich supply in lean muscle meat. If you eat the typical Western diet that includes abundant hamburgers or steaks, you may be getting too much methionine.
Too much methionine can potentially:
- Boost homocysteine production, which increases your need for vitamins B6, B12, folate, betaine and choline.
- Create inflammation in your body.
- Interfere with healthy thyroid function.
- Deplete levels of the amino acid glycine, which helps buffer the harmful effects of too much methionine in your body.
Some studies suggest that consuming an excess of methionine may shorten your lifespan – and restricting methionine extends it.
Including organ meats like liver in your diet can also help balance the nutritional shortcomings of muscle meats by supplying your body with betaine and folate, which generate glycine and neutralize homocysteine.
Discover Liver’s Impressive Nutrient Lineup
Of all the organs you could eat, liver is most likely the most valuable one for health.
Often called “nature’s multivitamin,” beef liver is one of the most nutrient-dense foods – and one of the most metabolically active tissues – with its special combination of vitamins, minerals, peptides, amino acids, fatty acids, enzymes, nucleic acid (RNA and DNA) and other hard-to-find nutrients.
Beef liver is an outstanding source of fat-soluble vitamins, which are the easiest for your body to absorb and utilize. And it’s especially rich in B-vitamins, including vitamin B12, folate, niacin, biotin and riboflavin.
Here are just some of the important nutrients in raw beef liver:
- Retinol – A preformed type of vitamin A essential for immune function, vision, skin health, reproduction and communication between cells.
- Folate – A B-vitamin needed for your body to make DNA and for the proper division of cells.
- Choline – Essential for healthy cell membranes, it’s also used by your brain and nervous system to support memory, mood and muscle control.
- Nucleic Acids (RNA, DNA) – Genetic building blocks used for sending and storing cellular information which diminish as you age.
- Vitamin B12 – An energy vitamin found in quantities 17 times higher in beef liver than ground beef.
- Niacin (B3) – Essential for brain health and cognition, mood and energy production.
- Copper – Required for enzymes like super oxide dismutase (SOD), which plays a key role in protecting against damage from excessive oxidative stress.
- Selenium – An important mineral for immune health, cellular defense and thyroid function.
- Ergothioneine – An amino acid that supports the body’s detoxification processes and cellular health.
- Heme iron – A type of iron critical for energy, performance, immune function and brain health.
- Carnosine, taurine, L-carnitine and anserine – Nutrients that support muscle recovery as well as brain, immune and cardiovascular health.
- Liver expressed antimicrobial peptide (LEAP-2) – A peptide, or amino acid-based messenger molecule, that’s involved in glucose metabolism and immune response.
The Role Your Liver Plays in Your Health
One of the largest organs in your body, your liver is your body’s workhorse and plays a central role in your body’s metabolic functions, as it:
- Helps balance energy metabolism and blood glucose levels by converting glycogen to glucose and storing extra glucose by converting it to glycogen.
- Helps break down dietary fats and either metabolizes them or releases them for energy.
- Alters dietary amino acids so your body can use them to produce energy or make fats or carbohydrates.
- Takes toxic substances and converts them into harmless substances, and assists with their removal from your body.
- Stores fat-soluble vitamins, like vitamins A and D, as well as minerals such as iron and copper, and releases them as needed.
- Produces an estimated 800 to 1,000 ml of bile each day to assist your small intestine in the breakdown and absorption of fats.
- Produces important proteins for healthy blood clotting (with the help of Vitamin K).
- Breaks down old or damaged blood cells.
- Create immune system factors that help protect your body against threats.
- Removes alcohol, chemicals and unwanted compounds from your blood.
Your liver cells, called hepatocytes, are responsible for filtering your blood. They play a powerful role in health by determining which nutrients should be used to produce energy, what should be stored and what should be eliminated from your body.
Contrary to popular belief, your liver doesn’t store toxins. Rather, it transforms toxins into a form that your body can dispose of, making your liver a key player in your body’s detoxification processes.
That’s why a liver from a healthy animal can potentially promote health, and not add a toxic load.
Could Eating Liver Potentially Benefit Your Liver?
Traditional peoples, Native Americans and early ancestral healers hold a unique belief:
They believe that eating the organs of a healthy animal can strengthen and support the health of the corresponding organ in the individual.
Many alternative practitioners today agree with this theory and use organs such as liver with their patients.
We know liver contains many valuable nutrients that support total body health, and especially healthy liver function, metabolism and energy production, so it’s not a far-fetched theory.
And now we have documented evidence that it may be more than just a theory…
Researchers at the University of Scotland have made an extraordinary discovery that supports these beliefs and practices.
In radioisotope labeling studies with animals, organs and glands that are consumed orally become deposited in the corresponding organs and glands in high concentrations. In other words, eating an animal organ appears to provide nutrients and enzymes highly specific to that organ, thus promoting the health of that organ.
However, there’s just one caveat – the liver must come from an absolutely healthy animal living in the cleanest environment possible.
If you can find liver in your grocery store or from your butcher, it most likely won’t meet this qualification. Most liver available today comes from conventionally raised animals, or animals living in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
The Ugly Truth About Conventionally Produced Liver
Cattle producers want nothing more than for you to imagine green country pastures when you think about their meat products.
Unfortunately, most contemporary food animals are not raised in that manner anymore – such practices have not been common since half a century ago. Today, more than 70% of cows are raised in factory farms instead of green country pastures. So, unless you know the source, you can assume beef liver is coming from a confined animal.
Cows are one of the few animals that can eat and digest grass and turn it into fuel – they are naturally suited for grazing. But the majority spend most of their lives in crowded animal factories, or CAFOs.
In the American beef industry, a young cow spends its first few months out on the pasture with its mother, nursing and nibbling grass. At age six months, it is removed from its mother and put in what’s known in the industry as a backgrounding pen.
This is when it begins its unnatural diet of grains – mostly genetically engineered corn and soy that’s often treated with chemicals like glyphosate (“Roundup”), 2,4-D, and atrazine, a proven hormone disruptor in the human body.
When a cow eats grains, problems can develop because a cow’s rumen, or stomach, isn’t designed for grains. Rich, starchy foods like corn disturb the animal’s digestion.
That’s where antibiotics enter the picture… They are routinely administered to CAFO cows for life because of the stress the animals endure from these unnatural living conditions and diet. Approximately 50% of the antibiotics given are used to promote growth.
And the amounts are staggering. More than 63 tons of antibiotics are used annually in livestock around the world – 80% of that for animals in food production. This is nearly twice the amount used in humans, so it is no wonder residues are found in meat.
And then there are hormones – both natural and synthetic – to make cows grow faster. Outlawed in the European Union (EU), these hormones are still allowed in American beef.
What you need to know is all this applies not just with the beef liver you buy in the store or from a butcher, but also with any supplement made with beef liver that doesn’t disclose its source.
Another Little-Known Reason Why Source Matters When Buying Beef Liver – Food or Supplement
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease as it is commonly known, is a fatal disease that slowly eats away at the cow’s brain and spinal cord.
Humans can’t get the same form of mad cow disease as cattle, but they can get a variant of it called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease if they eat food contaminated with the diseased tissue of sick cattle.
One of the main ways BSE is transferred among cows is by feeding them bone meal and waste products from other infected cattle.
While it’s no longer legal to feed beef-based products to cows, CAFO cows are still fed dead cow remains through chicken feed.
An animal feed product known as broiler or chicken litter is permitted. This mixture of chicken feces, bedding, spent feed and feathers has been used in beef production for more than 40 years.
Broiler litter can contain antibiotics, heavy metals, pathogenic bacteria and even dead rodents, according to Consumers Union. And because it’s allowed to be fed to chickens, it can contain cattle waste.
The U.S. FDA may have banned the practice of feeding the remains of dead cows to cattle in 1997, but it never prohibited the feeding of deceased cows to poultry. So, by consuming chicken feed, cows indirectly ingest the remains of dead and potentially diseased cattle.
The Advantages of Grass-Fed Liver
To summarize, cattle raised in a CAFO are:
- Crammed together and treated inhumanely.
- Routinely fed glyphosate- and atrazine-treated, bioengineered grains and grain byproducts.
- Administered antibiotics to prevent disease from stress and an unnatural diet.
- Given synthetic hormone and steroid “implants” to promote growth.
- Fed animal wastes that can promote the transmission of mad cow disease.
But that’s not all…
Beef is often contaminated with drug residues as it’s estimated that as much as 20% of the drugs administered may remain in the meat.
Even more concerning, some residues found in meat by government agencies have been found to be drugs that should never be used in food animals.
There’s no question diet and drugs affect the quality of an animal’s organs, so why would you want to consume any product containing liver from a CAFO animal?
On the other hand, the livers of grass-fed animals are safe to eat. They contain an abundance of nutrients – everything from amino acids to high-quality fats, vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin A, conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, and choline.
Products made from grass-fed animals also contain healthier omega-3 fats – up to five times more – compared to conventional grain-fed animals.
Truly 100% grass-fed cows are raised without antibiotics (except when needed for illness), synthetic hormones and steroid implants, pesticides, herbicides, glyphosate and bioengineered grains.
Finally, cows that are exclusively pasture raised receive no chicken feed or any kind of animal waste.
Enjoy the Many Benefits of This Extraordinary Organ with Grass Fed Beef Liver Capsules
Even if a healthy source of beef liver was readily available, I realize many people simply don’t care to eat it, much less cook it at home.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t receive the many benefits of beef liver. Grass Fed Beef Liver comes in convenient, tightly sealed capsules so you can get all the goodness of beef liver without having to eat it.
Grass Fed Beef Liver is 100% pure and is not defatted. One serving of 6 capsules provides 3,000 mg of Beef Liver.
Our product is minimally processed and 100% freeze dried to safeguard biological activity. Instead of using high heat-processing methods, freeze drying preserves the heat-sensitive vitamins, minerals and co-factors of components, leaving the nutrients in the same balance found in nature.
To ensure both safety and quality, our supplier provides traceability back to the farm source and processing plant, retaining control of the product throughout every step until delivery. During this process, the beef liver is tested for heavy metals.
Finally, to avoid any contamination from CAFO cows, we use plant-derived HPMC capsules for Grass Fed Beef Liver, as regular bovine gelatin capsules can contain ingredients from factory-farmed cows.
So, who might benefit most from taking Grass Fed Beef Liver?
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends that certain groups of people add liver to their diet to help them meet their micronutrient needs if they are unable to meet them through their regular diet or if their ability to absorb nutrition is impaired.
These groups may include…
- Bodybuilders and athletes who train intensively for more energy.
- Women of childbearing age.
- People with digestive issues.
- Those primarily eating plant-based foods.
- Seniors who want to increase their intake of nutrients.
I believe Grass Fed Beef Liver can benefit anyone who wants to restore and supplement valuable vitamins, minerals, amino acids and more to their everyday diet, especially those eating processed and cooked foods.
Let’s find out more about this exceptional beef liver…
Grass Fed Beef Liver – Sourced Only from Lifetime Grazed New Zealand Cattle
It only makes sense that for healthy, clean livers, you would want them to come from the finest animals raised in the purest environment.
New Zealand stands apart from other meat-producing regions in the world because its moderate climate results in green pastures throughout the year, which provides the cows with the most natural and healthiest diet year-round.
Grass Fed Beef Liver is made from animals born and raised in New Zealand on free-range ranches. Because of their year-round access to grass, they’re raised without genetically engineered feed, growth stimulants or hormones.
Instead of taking a young calf from its mother at six months of age, a lifetime grazed cow remains on grassland for its entire life. It eats only grass and forages, and is fed no supplemental grains.
So, what about the potential for prion and wasting diseases?
These New Zealand herds are free of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) diseases such as chronic wasting disease in deer (CWD), scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the prion disease in animals associated with the human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Because New Zealand has never had BSE or CWD and has been free of scrapie since 1954, I believe New Zealand animal-sourced ingredients are superior for human health products.
New Zealand takes the health of its livestock – and the well-being of the environment seriously.
And because of its strict government licensing, auditing and certification procedures, New Zealand freeze-dried products can be used with complete confidence in their origin, safety and efficacy.
Developed with You in Mind, Premium Grass Fed Beef Liver in Convenient Capsules
While I may recommend doing so, you don’t need to consume beef liver to benefit from its remarkable lineup of nutrients.
Our Grass Fed Beef Liver, in convenient capsule form, is not much different from eating the real thing – only you don’t need to taste or smell it.
Whether you want to help balance your healthy diet of lean muscle meats or provide your body with the many nutrients found in beef liver, Grass Fed Beef Liver provides a simple way to do it.
And because our freeze-dried Grass Fed Beef Liver comes only from the finest cows free ranging on pristine New Zealand grasslands, you can be assured that you are getting the cleanest beef liver available today.
Tap into your ancestral wisdom, and discover what they and other ancient healers have known for centuries, and order Grass Fed Beef Liver today.