From Dr Paul Saladino's newsletter

For most of human history, kidney was prized food.

It appeared regularly on English, French, and Central European tables.

It was a Sunday dish across large parts of the Middle East and Asia.

It was one of the cuts a hunter's family reached for first, because on a fresh kill, the organ meats spoiled fastest and carried the highest nutrient value per pound.

Yet today, kidney is something most Americans have never touched. Same story for heart, liver, spleen, sweetbreads, tripe, and marrow.

In other words…

Roughly half of the animal has quietly disappeared from the American plate over the last two generations.

But why? Why would the food system phase out the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet?

Peoples’ tastes didn’t change naturally over time. A lot of factors that appeared in the 20th century came together to shove organs off American plates and into the trash can.

First, let’s rewind to premodern food systems to show what they thought of organs…

 Before refrigeration, if you butchered a cow, you had to use all of it quickly or lose the value of what you'd raised.

Organs spoiled first specifically because of their nutrient density (fuel for bacterial growth), but also because:

They have higher water content (creates ideal conditions for bacterial growth)

 They have higher enzymatic activity (gives bacteria substrates to feed on)

 And so people ate the organs first.

Meanwhile, muscle meat could be salted, smoked, or preserved for longer.

Every traditional food culture developed dishes around organs as a result:

Steak and kidney pie

 Liver and onions

 Blood sausage

 Menudo

 Haggis

 Sweetbreads with brown butter

 Marrow bones served with toast

 Tripe soups from Mexico to Vietnam

 Organs were considered an elevated cuisine rather than “peasant food.” In many cases, they were served at holiday celebrations.

Then the mid-20th century happened…

 Industrial slaughterhouses restructured the economics of meat.

When one facility processed thousands of animals a week, the incentive was to identify the highest-margin cuts (muscle meat) and sell everything else at the lowest possible price, often for export or industrial use.

Meanwhile, advancements in American cold chain infrastructure (refrigerated trucks, refrigerated warehouses, and freezers in every home) meant American consumers no longer needed to buy or process whole animals.

You could buy just the cut you wanted, and it wouldn’t spoil.

In theory, that means organs become even more prized because you can preserve them for longer.

But postwar affluence really kneecapped organs here.

Organ meats became associated with things like poverty and the war years. People started to think of it as “poor folks’ food”. Marketing pushed steaks and boneless chicken breasts as aspirational.

The kids of the generation that ate liver every Wednesday grew up thinking of it as embarrassing food.

By 1970, most American children had never seen an organ on a family dinner table.

The precise historical data on organ meat consumption is limited (USDA never tracked offal-specific intake with the same rigor as major muscle-meat categories), but the change is well documented:

Estimates from multiple sources put the decline in the United States at 80 to 90 percent between the 1940s and the 1970s.

Consumption has stayed at the low level ever since.

What we lost with those foods is measurable in nutrient terms, and the loss is not small…

 Just look at what the more well-known organ means have to offer:

Liver is the most nutrient-dense food humans have access to. One serving of beef liver provides nearly 30 times the daily vitamin B12 requirement, over 7 times the daily retinol requirement (the animal form of vitamin A that the body uses directly), and significant amounts of copper, folate, choline, and iron. Muscle meat is a good protein source. Liver is a functional multivitamin. No plant food matches it.

Heart is the richest known dietary source of coenzyme Q10, at ~11 milligrams per 100 grams (roughly 3-4 times what you'd get from an equal weight of muscle meat). CoQ10 is a molecule mitochondria use to produce ATP, and the heart tissue is loaded with it because it never stops working in a living animal. Heart also delivers concentrated taurine, L-carnitine, and B vitamins. It tastes and cooks more like muscle meat than any other organ, so it's a natural first stop for anyone aiming to eat this way.

Kidney provides among the highest natural selenium and vitamin B12 concentrations in the food supply (one serving delivers well over the daily requirement for both). It carries a full day's intake of riboflavin, too. Oh, and it is one of the only meaningful dietary sources of diamine oxidase, the enzyme your gut uses to break down histamine from food. For anyone with histamine sensitivity, or interested in supporting the systems that clear it, look at kidney.

I eat these three regularly. They are part of the foundation of how I've eaten for years, and along with the broader shift to real animal-based food…

They were part of how I cleared my own eczema after a decade of it not responding to anything the medical system offered me.

But they’re not the only three…

 Here are a few other overlooked organ meats I highly suggest you look into:

Spleen delivers heme iron at concentrations nothing else in the food supply matches. If you or anyone in your family struggles with iron status, look into spleen. It is also a food for building blood in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which developed the same practical wisdom empirically over centuries.

Sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas) were historically the "chef's cut" in European cuisine (especially French) and still command premium prices at upscale restaurants. They contain unique polypeptides and hormones muscle meat lacks. They also have one of the mildest flavors of any organ, which is why they were the entry point for organ eating in French cooking.

Tongue is high-quality protein and fat, with a rich flavor and a texture closer to slow-cooked brisket than to what most people imagine when they hear "organ meat." It is culturally accessible in a huge portion of world cuisine (Mexican, Jewish, Korean, and countless others), which makes it one of the easier organs to try if you're new to this and want to start with something familiar.

Brain and testicles are also eaten globally and carry distinct nutrient profiles. Brain is dense in DHA and cholesterol (which a fetus or infant’s developing brain uses to build itself). Testicles are high in specific hormones and amino acid profiles.

See?

A small amount of organ meats delivers a wide spectrum of nutrients to your body. Much more per serving than muscle meat.

Of course, I understand if you’re a bit hesitant to try something like brain or spleen. Even something milder like sweetbreads can sound odd and be hard to get right.

The good news is you don’t have to eat all of these at once or at all…

 Here's how to actually start.

Start with heart. It's the easiest cultural on-ramp. Cook it like a steak or grind it into your ground beef. Season generously, sear hot, slice thin. Most people who taste heart cooked well are surprised how much they like it.

Mix liver into ground beef. Make a blend of ~20% liver and ~80% ground beef, and season to taste (garlic, onion, herbs). This is one of the easiest ways to eat liver regularly without needing to like the flavor of pure liver. Meatballs, burgers, chili, meat sauce, etc… they all work.

Try kidney with proper prep. Soaking is key. Split the kidney, remove the white central membrane, and soak in cold salted water or milk for several hours before cooking. This removes most of the strong flavor. Then sauté with butter, onions, and herbs. Steak and kidney pie is the classic entry dish, and it works.

Sweetbreads and tongue when you're ready. These are the "next level" organs. Sweetbreads take some technique (poaching, pressing, then searing) but are one of the most delicious foods you can eat. Tongue is nearly foolproof: Simmer for hours until tender, peel, slice, serve.

Source from local operations. Small butchers, farmers markets, and direct-from-rancher purchases are your best sources. Organs from a well-raised animal are night-and-day different from organs from a feedlot animal. If you buy a quarter or half cow direct, ask specifically for the organs. Many ranchers include them for free or at nominal cost because they're not sure the customer wants them.

If cooking organs genuinely won’t happen in your kitchen,​ two options:

First, you can try meat snacks that contain organs. Like with any meat or organs, do your due diligence to find the best quality.

High-quality organ supplementation is another good way to dip your toes in.

Neither of these replicate whole-food nutrition (nothing does), but they are dramatically better than no organs at all.

Something is better than nothing.

 The half of the animal we throw away was food, prized food, for as long as humans have been eating animals.

In the middle of the 20th century, a marketing and infrastructure shift convinced a generation of Americans to throw away the most nutrient-dense part of every animal they ate.

Fortunately, more people are waking up to the fact that organs should be priority in many cases.

So buy an organ meat. Cook it. Eat it. Bring back the food your grandmother's grandmother took for granted.

Or, at the very least, find a good source of clean organ supplements and start with those.

Time to remember how we used to eat.

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Dr Horse's suggestion:

Move to a rural area where you have access to pasture raised beef that is butchered on a family farm.

Try using blending and more extensive preps like steak and kidney pie to make food palatable to modern Americans.

But you really should try to match medical conditions to foods as Dr Saladino said.

Once local people start telling each other what food cures which disease, then the foods you offer for sale could demand 

a higher price. That will help your local community survive as they will have an income during a period of escalating 

prices in the midst of a Depression