Beef Liver

[sven]

I'm sure this has already been covered but there is a HUGE difference between grassfed liver and grainfed liver from beef.  I received my first shipment from slankers and ate their beef liver for the first time and my god... it was delicious.  I was under the impression that I was getting frozen grassfed liver from my butcher it turns out that I was  getting grain fed.  I always hated the taste and could not even eat it without chasing it down with water. 

~~differences~~

Grainfed liver:::
-extremely soft and weak, I could poke at it with my finger and it would crumble, kinda like jello or silly puddy
-taste was horrific, extremely dense pungent smelly god aweful crap, very dark in color.  The only reason I choked it down was for the perceived health benefits
-defrosts extremely fast in room temperature

Grassfed liver:::
- very strong and well shaped, the texture resembles a unripe fruit, I actually had to chew this liver and it was hard to cut up with a knife
- taste was mild and even though it was frozen and thawed it tasted very fresh, I did not have to plug my nose and chase it with water this was a huge relief. 
- defrosted at a normal pace similar to muscle meats
-the digestibility was superb probably because I didn't have to drink so much water to kill the taste

I won't ever eat organs from anywhere else but slankers again, unless there is a farm or something close that I could get a fresh constant supply, but I doubt it.  The difference is night and day with liver.  Liver is truly a powerful anti-fatigue food just like the weston price website says....  Now go eat a liver

[PaleoPhil]

Yes, I too find that raw 100% grassfed beef liver gives me an energy boost and a bit of euphoria as well. Joanne Hay also reports improved energy from raw liver and biochemist Benjamin Ershoff did an experiment which showed that rats could swim much longer when fed powdered liver.

Anti Fatigue Factor of Liver
By Joanne Hay
http://editor.nourishedmagazine.com.au/articles/anti-fatigue-factor-of-liver

Taking raw liver as a superfood supplement is probably the best advice I have ever taken. I swallow about a teaspoon, frozen, cut into pillules, with a glass of raw milk and my energy level soars. This time of year is when I begin to take raw liver pills daily. In traditional chinese medicine Spring is the season the liver energy is at it’s highest, so now is the time to heal thy liver.

Lynn Razaitis, a writer and chapter for the Weston A Price Foundation reveals some interesting research on liver….

“Liver’s as-yet-unidentified anti-fatigue factor makes it a favorite with athletes and bodybuilders. The factor was described by Benjamin K. Ershoff, PhD, in a July 1951 article published in the Proceedings for the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine.

I wonder if any of the people who experienced fatigue on ZC, VLC or carnivore diets ate liver during their experiments? Many ZCers/VLCers don't eat much organs. Lex has reported that he thinks much of the reason for his long-term success is eating organs, which are part of his daily food mix, as I understand it.

Another common cause of fatigue during the early period of transition to VLC is the time it takes for the body to transition from burning mostly carbs to burning mostly fat. Some people have more difficulty making the transition than others. I wonder if liver and other organs would help even them?

[miles]

Another common cause of fatigue during the early period of transition to VLC is the time it takes for the body to transition from burning mostly carbs to burning mostly fat. Some people have more difficulty making the transition than others. I wonder if liver and other organs would help even them?

Wouldn't any person eating raw paleo be burning mostly fat? Even if they ate mostly fruit. Only way I can see one would be burning mostly carbs(eating paleo) is if they eat a lot of roots/tubers(cooked), right?

[PaleoPhil]

Wouldn't any person eating raw paleo be burning mostly fat? Even if they ate mostly fruit. Only way I can see one would be burning mostly carbs(eating paleo) is if they eat a lot of roots/tubers(cooked), right?

Not according to the critics here of VLC/ZC, though you have somewhat of a point there. I've tried to point out to Tyler that his self-reported intake of 5-25% calories as carbs is actually considered VLC to LC, to no avail. I don't see how someone would "be burning mostly fat" if they were eating "mostly fruit", though. Did you mean to write something like plentiful fruit but mostly fat?

Besides, I specified the transition stage to VLC (from moderate-to-high carb). If someone is already eating VLC then there's no transition. Fatigue during this transition stage is a well-known common problem, though not all suffer it (as I mentioned in another thread, I didn't, for example).

[MoonStalkeR]

After a few months, I crave liver again. This time I ate lamb liver from Slanker's (tastes better and more tender). I didn't find the Slanker's beef liver to be very enjoyable. I also eat beef liver from Organic Prairie. It actually tastes good and there's no indication of it being grass-fed, but I think Organic Prairie products are mostly grass-fed. All the livers I've tasted are varied.

[RawZi]

    I'm getting grass-fed fresh beef liver Wednesday, for all my pets and myself.  Any ideas how to prepare it for me?  I've mostly just done plain calf, lamb, goat, chicken and fish livers.  Maybe a recipe or some special preparation? A raw vegan told me liver jerky is good (for pets better than muscle jerky).  I don't know if I'll like the stronger taste of beef over the other animals.  Lamb liver, although lower in carb than bovine, has a nicer sweeter taste OMO.

[Seb V-G]

I was wondering if people would believe "wild" boar liver would be best to eat than beef that has been finished with grain (that's the closest I can get for fresh healthy beef, grain fed organic is probably my best bet during the winter months though). I'm not completely sure what boars are supposed to eat (scavengers), so I'm not sure ...

The liver isn't jellowy or anything so I think that means it's healthy...

By the way, is 2 pounds of liver a week too much?

[MoonStalkeR]

Boars eat pretty much everything they can find (grass, nuts, meat, fruit, etc). How does it work with this wild boar? It's caught and then kept in captivity eating grains?

Are you going to eat all of it at once? I think 0.5 ib twice a week is best, unless you really crave more...

[djr_81]

A raw vegan told me liver jerky is good (for pets better than muscle jerky). 

Liver jerky is very tasty. It's worth a try with at least some of the liver.

I was wondering if people would believe "wild" boar liver would be best to eat than beef that has been finished with grain (that's the closest I can get for fresh healthy beef, grain fed organic is probably my best bet during the winter months though). I'm not completely sure what boars are supposed to eat (scavengers), so I'm not sure ...

The liver isn't jellowy or anything so I think that means it's healthy...

By the way, is 2 pounds of liver a week too much?

Wild boars will eat a wide variety of things. Some grass, some herbs & plants, some seeds/nuts/grains, some small animals. A much better diet than a grain finished steer IMO.
2 pounds of liver a week sounds excessive to me. I guess it depends on what you might be deficient in as well as your lifestyle. Your body should let you know though. The taste will be less appealing when you are eating more than you need. You will also probably get diarrhea if you eat way too much as your body tries to get rid of it.

[miles]

I don't see how someone would "be burning mostly fat" if they were eating "mostly fruit", though. Did you mean to write something like plentiful fruit but mostly fat?

I'm not saying I'm right. I just thought that say if you were eating Mostly Fruit(by mass), with lesser amounts of bone marrow/nuts/comb honey(by mass) for example that you would still burn more calories from fat. Isn't the fructose even converted to fat once it fills up the liver, which happens quickly? Glucose/Fructose being ~50/50. And then when you're resting wouldn't your body be burning fat anyway, to save any muscle-glycogen from the glucose, for when you may need it?

When I say 'burning mostly fat' I just mean burning anything above 50% of calories as fat.

Btw.. 100g Bone marrow contains the same number of calories as 1.68kg of apples!

[PaleoPhil]

My original comment that you quoted was regarding transition to a VLC diet:

Quote from: PaleoPhil on Yesterday at 07:38:34 PM
Another common cause of fatigue during the early period of transition to VLC is the time it takes for the body to transition from burning mostly carbs to burning mostly fat. Some people have more difficulty making the transition than others. I wonder if liver and other organs would help even them?

Miles, first let me make sure that you understand what I mean by VLC. VLC by definition means low intake of carbs as calories, not mass. It seems to generally be viewed as being somewhere below 10-30% calories as carbs. In my case it's around 2-4% calories as carbs.

It seems that your question comes down to, is it possible to eat a raw Paleo diet that's high in carbs as calories, yes? Since it's possible to eat only raw fruit and survive for some years (see 30BAD), then the answer would appear to be yes. My understanding is that the Wai diet that has a section in this forum is higher in carb calories than fat calories, correct me if I err. So the answer to your original question would appear to be no, any person eating raw Paleo wouldn't necessarily have to be eating mostly fat, neither by percent of calories nor by mass or volume.

Since percent of calories (or maybe effective calories--see Barry Groves http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/should-all-animals-eat-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet.html) is more relevant to human use of foods than percent of mass or volume and is widely assumed to be what people mean when they talk about low carb and quote ratios, I think it only adds complexity and potential confusion to add percent of mass or volume to discussions and as a result I rarely cite those figures. So when I talk about burning mostly fats, I mean "mostly" to be as a % of total calories. The only time I tend to get into the figures by mass is when I want to determine what the mass of fat vs protein and carbs I'm eating converts to in terms of % macronutrient ratio, mainly because it might help my constipation and perhaps help in other ways to eat much more fat than protein, not because I think there's any magic in macronutrient ratios for all. For healthy people I think that measuring macronutrient ratios is probably largely unnecessary, but that's a separate topic of its own.