Organ Meats: A Bounty of Nutrition

If you are looking to get the ultimate amount of nutrition in your diet, look no further than organ meats. Organ meats are valued for their broad range of nutrient content and density. Liver is considered a superfood and is especially rich in vitamin B12, iron, zinc, selenium, and vitamin A, making it a nutritional powerhouse that can help support overall health and immune function. It is also a wonderful source of folate, containing approximately 290 mcg per 3.5 oz serving. This amount provides about 72.5% of the daily value recommended for adults, and is especially important for women's reproductive health. Liver is especially high in heme iron, which is highly bioavailable, meaning the body can absorb and utilize it efficiently. This makes liver a valuable food source for individuals at risk of iron-deficiency anemia or those who need to boost their iron levels. If you haven't tried liver before, our Ancestral Blend is a ground blend featuring 70% of our standard ground bison and 30% ground liver. It's a wonderful way to incorporate liver into your diet and into easy, everyday cooking like tacos or bolognese. 

Organ meats are ounce for ounce more nutritionally dense than standard muscle meat cuts. Bison kidney is another organ that is packed with nutrients, having a similar nutrition profile to liver. While kidney is generally lower in vitamins A and C compared to liver, it is also lower in fat and calories. It's a unique delicacy that is quite delicious in addition to its health benefits. Bison heart is a wonderful organ meat to try if you are new to eating organs. Being a muscle, the heart is similar in texture to other muscle cuts but offers a broader range of vitamins and minerals. It's particularly rich in B vitamins, iron, zinc, and CoQ10.

It's important to emphasize the additional health benefits of consuming grass-fed and grass-finished organ meats. The organs process and filter toxins from the body. The forage that animals consume can affect the nutrient content of their organ meat. A 2023 study in the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology found that "pasture-finishing (i.e., grass-fed) broadly improves bison metabolic health and accumulates additional potential health-promoting compounds in their meat compared to concentrate finishing in confinement (i.e., pen-finished)" and that "overall phytochemical richness was 2.3-fold higher in pasture-finished animals." Phytochemicals are naturally occurring compounds found in plants that have potential health benefits for humans. Beta-carotene is a recognizable example of a phytochemical found in prairie-grass, and is responsible for the yellow colored fat that grass-fed meat can acquire.

We think of organ meats as nature’s multi-vitamin and by utilizing the entire animal that we harvest, we are able to offer a variety of organ meats to our customers. Please reach out to our staff with any questions that you might have about organ meats or our products in general.