Raw brain buying concern?

[PaganGoy]

Anything I should know before buying brain?
I have access to grass fed organic but dont know if it's vaccinated or not. is it a good buy?
Thank you.

[TylerDurden]

Well, I have bought high quality raw cows' brain in the UK and that was fine and some dubious raw pigs' brain in Austria(I gather even the organic ones are fed on soy!). Never liked the taste of the latter, unsurprisingly, but could not get better in Austria. Unless one owns one's own (micro) farm, one generally has to compromise somewhat on this sort of diet.

[PaganGoy]

Ok I take it vaccines are not a serious problem then, excellent.

[TylerDurden]

Ok I take it vaccines are not a serious problem then, excellent.

The whole mercury-in-vaccines thing was a myth. Dr Wakefield did overdo things. For one thing the autism growth  myth is bogus.

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

The whole mercury-in-vaccines thing was a myth. Dr Wakefield did overdo things. For one thing the autism growth  myth is bogus.

Ok I take it vaccines are not a serious problem then, excellent.

Well, a relative of mine did lose their sense of smell and taste after getting vaccinated. I don't think I'd call that safe. I'm not saying it was mercury, but something in the vaccine caused it.
Not sure what it was for, might have been the flu vaccine.

Regarding brain, it's fine, as are all organs, as long as the animal is healthy. So grass-fed organic should be fine.

[surfsteve]

Interesting thread.

A lot of animals will eat the brain first out of a young animal who's skull hasn't quite hardened yet. I've seen my dog to it to a kitten.

I've thought of making beef brain smoothies. The thing that has kept me from them is the fear of prion diseases. One thing going for them is that these diseases can't be killed by normal cooking temperatures so there's no difference there in eating them cooked or raw.

Eating thymus gland, AKA sweetbreads is also a concern when it comes to prions and I've been eating them raw for many years, lately a half pound a day; so I think I should probably just go for it and give brains a try.   

WHOLE BRAIN EXTRACT CONTAINS

    Proteins Exclusively Found And Expressed In Whole Brain Extract
    Brain Derived Glandulars Including The Pituitary, Hypothalamus and Pineal Glands
    Unique Peptides And Neurotrophic Factors Including Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)
    Sphingomyelin — Found In High Concentrations In The Myelin Sheath. *
    Brain Cell Activators, Phosphatidylserine & Omega-3 Fats EPA and DHA *

https://www.amazon.com/Ancestral-Supplements-Grass-Brain-Liver/dp/B0756S6YGF

Brain consumption can result in contracting fatal transmissible spongiform encephalopathies such as Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and other prion diseases in humans and mad cow disease in cattle.[10] Another prion disease called kuru has been traced to a funerary ritual among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea in which those close to the dead would eat the brain of the deceased to create a sense of immortality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_as_food

Looks like they are quite expensive on Amazon.  I think they are really cheap at the meat market. If I were to try them I would put them in a tupperware dish and freeze them into molds to slightly thaw and slice with my slicer and then place the slices in plastic bags to store in the freezer to take one out and wack them on the counter, then dump them into my food processor and slowly add water whenever I want to make a brain smoothie.

I never knew that brains contained a lot of omega 3. I wonder if the brain they sell at the butcher shop also contains Pituitary, Hypothalamus and Pineal Glands, like mentioned in the Amazon link I quoted. That has me quite interested. My guess is it probably does. Brain also contains a lot of cholesterol but I already get quite a bit from the half pound of raw liver I eat a day. All this is a game changer and I'm seriously considering eating it after reading about it more...

Think I'll ask for some at the supermarket next time...

[PaganGoy]

I was going to blend it too but it dosent taste bad at all. I always blend kidney and liver but brain is alot more palatable.

[van]

every now and then here I feel 'compelled' to remind that when you blend,, you're missing out on eating what your body wants you to eat.  Yes, initially organs can 'taste bad', but keep trying them and you'll learn to go beyond that initial rejecting taste and your body will inform you as to what and how much to eat.  Otherwise we end up using mind when our body is much smarter.   Not to mention the oxidation of food when using high speed blending.   When food is too tough comfortably chew, I like a small vacuum mounted hand grind meat grinder.  They work incredibly well for that.

[Qondrar_The_Redeemer]

I've never understood how some other people dislike liver so much. I find it one of the best tasting raw animal foods, along with bone marrow. Then again, I've always been very accepting of foods viewed as disgusting/bad tasting by others.

Also, as van said, the more you make a food artificially palatable, the less you'll know about how much you should actually eat. Sometimes even natural foods (such as bone marrow) can be so  palatable, that in my case, I need to eat them slowly in order to not overeat.

[TylerDurden]

The Instincto habit of "mono-eating" certainly makes sense. Blending is way too artificial.

[jibrael]

Don't you get bored eating same things again and again and again?

[TylerDurden]

Don't you get bored eating same things again and again and again?

Err, no, that's not what "mono-eating" means. It simply means eating 1 type of food at a time. So, I might eat 1 meal of raw swordfish, or raw steak tartare, or raw oysters or  raw wild boar. I also would normally stick to 1 type of organ-meat, if possible. So, I might eat a couple of raw pigs' tongues in 1 meal or 1 raw ox liver at another meal. The main thing is to ensure some variety over the course of each month. I try to include some raw wild game or raw wildcaught seafood as much as possible, though austrian supermarkets tend to provide raw grassfed meat now, and even the non-100% grassfed meat is way superior to what is found in UK or US supermarkets as they still buy from alpine peasant farmers et al.

There have been times when I had very limited variety in the far past. But I have no real problem with eating only raw leg of lamb or raw beef tongue for weeks on end. It's only after a few months that my instincts kick in and I start needing something more.

The tragedy is that there seems to be nothing in Europe like the cow-sharing schemes found in the US to enable raw dairy consumption.I would love paying a farmer to feed a flock of chickens by buying a share of the flock and getting a regular amount of eggs provided that I could dictate what the chickens were fed on, for example.