Consuming raw animal protein, especially that of organs has been occurring in this species' history for hundreds of thousands of years. Organ meats are the most nutritious, most readily digestible, and have the most vital healing effects on the body. Organs are large boosts of energy, Full of minerals, vitamins, enzymes, very high quality proteins, essential fatty acids, viable amino acids that are hard to find in other foods that aid in growth, recovery, and all aspects of cellular health. Organs are very high in vitality, the essence of what drives life is present and this is what is absorbed from consuming organs raw. The Nutrient profile is very much present to qualify these foods as the most energy providing, highly concentrated vitality boosting foods on the planet that also account for the very most important effects your body needs to live.
OF ALL THE ORGANS THE MOST REVERED, SOUGHT AFTER, AND HEAVILY CONCENTRATED ORGAN IS THE LIVER
THE LIVER IS YOUR MOST PRECIOUS ORGAN TO YOUR HEALTH, SO IT IS CONSISTENT THAT IT HAS THE MOST VITAL HEALTH EFFECTS WHEN CONSUMED
IT IS THE PRIZE IN NATURE, SAVED FOR THE ALPHA MALE AMONG LIONS AND OTHER CARNIVOROUS MAMMALS
KILLER WHALES HUNT GREAT WHITE SHARKS ONLY TO CONSUME THEIR LIVER
KNOW FOR ITS PROPERTIES OF CELLULAR REGENERATION AND ANTI-FATIGUE
EATEN RAW IN MANY CULTURES, ONLY THE HARD, ONLY THE STRONG
RAW LIVER FOR LIFEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Nourishing the Liver
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, Spring time is when the ‘Chi’ is in the Liver Meridian more than any other time of year. The Liver energy is considered the General, the director of energy, the leader of all the meridians, the instigator, the birth. So we are at the beginning again. Each Spring, as it has done for millenia, chi begins its yearly movement round the body, focusing in each meridian as the moon waxes and wanes. (Forgive us those in the Northern Hemisphere for discussing Spring, while you are experiencing descent into winter darkness.)
In the spring. We are being born again, and as with our own birth, we are bestowed with the bounteous stores of energy our bodies have gathered during our time in the womb of the winter months. Suddenly our bodies release this energy, we clear away any accumulations and begin the ascent into the most Yang time of year, High Summer. We’ll need to be in tip top shape to cope with the extra energy needs of Summer. So our bodies begin to naturally detoxify.
Our Liver energy is responsible for the free flow of energy which is needed to clear away accumulations and project us into Summer. What happens in the body when the Liver Meridian is not flowing freely?
Symptoms such as:
- ligament and muscle tightness or pain (caused by Liver stuckness and or Yin deficiency*)
- depression with or without bursts of anger, grumpiness, crankiness (caused by stuckness and or Liver Yin deficiency*)
- itchy scalp, eyes, nasal passages and skin, usually put down to pollen allergies, but if the Liver was moist and moving well, these symptoms wouldn’t manifest
- psychosis caused by liver wind which occurs when Liver Yin is deficient
- digestive difficulties like bloating, constipation and diarrhoea alternating, floating stool – Liver stuckness impinging on the digestive processes
- angry red swelling pimples or sores on the face and neck – Liver Fire caused by either stuckness or Yin deficiency
- dry eyes – Yin deficiency
- headaches – Yin deficiency, fire, stuckness or wind
- irritability – Yin deficiency or stuckness
* Yin is the principle related to the feminine, nourishing, moistening, cooling energies of the body.
You may notice these symptoms appearing or worsening during Spring.
How do we deal with these symptoms?
The Liver is trying to do it’s job but in order to do so it needs, you guessed it, Nourishment.
Most of these symptoms are expressions of liver Yin deficiency so nourishing the Yin would be the best way to bring balance.
In the case of excessive symptoms like red hot pimples, painful muscles or ligaments or digestive difficulties involving pain some may be tempted to ‘cleanse’ the Liver with herbs and fasting. Be aware however, that most people have impaired digestion and starving it or giving the body only cold raw juices will not improve this, nor will herbs be very well digested. Instead, most excessive situations will respond to nourishment.
HOW DO YOU NOURISH THE LIVER?
Ancient Chinese Medical Texts prescribe the organ of an animal to treat the organ that is out of balance and its associated energy meridian. Kidney of an animal for the Kidney energy, tripe for digestion, liver for the Liver. The Li-Chi, a handbook of rituals published during China’s Han era (202B.C. to 220A.D.), lists liver as one of the Eight Delicacies.
Practically every cuisine has liver specialties. Some cultures place such high value on liver they consider it the seat of the soul. It is so sacred that human hands can’t touch it. As soon as a beast is slain, special implements extract the liver and cut it into as many pieces as there are members in the tribe. They would eat it there and then, raw and warm. Much like other great predators, ancient humans sought out older animals who would have larger livers and fatty offal and would often left their lean rump for the carrion.
It is widely known by all ancient societies that liver is the most nourishing food on the planet. Liver contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food including:
- High-quality protein
- Vitamin A – nature’s most concentrated source
- All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12 if consumed raw
- One of our best sources of folic acid
- A highly usable form of iron
- Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper
- A yet unidentified but proven to exist anti-fatigue factor
- CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function if consumed raw
- A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA.
BUT ISN’T LIVER DANGEROUS?
In spite of widespread tradition and abundant scientific evidence on the health benefits of liver, conventional nutritionists now warn against its consumption.
Toxins
“What about the Toxins” is a common response to the suggestion of consuming liver. Indeed, one of the roles of the liver is to neutralize toxins (such as drugs and pesticides); but the liver does not store toxins. Instead, poisonous compounds that the body cannot neutralize and eliminate are likely to lodge in the fatty tissues and the nervous system. The liver is not a storage organ for toxins but it is a storage organ for many important nutrients (vitamins A, D, E, K, B12 and folic acid, and minerals such as copper and iron). These nutrients provide the body with some of the tools it needs to get rid of toxins.
So why would you want to clean something that is not dirty? Practitioners who recommend liver cleansing usually mean, deprive your body of any substantial food so your liver doesn’t have to work on digestion and can clean your blood of toxins. Again, this will only work well if your digestion is strong and you are not deficient of energy. Still, healing through nourishment is, in most cases, more valid a protocol.
It deserves to be mentioned: Do not consume the livers of animals who’ve lived in confinement. Pasturefed and Organic are better choices (if you’re in Australia organic means animals have access to grass and natural feed). If you only have supermarket options, ask for calves liver, they have lived on pasture.
Vitamin A Toxicity
Concerns about Vitamin As toxicity stem from studies in which moderate doses ofsynthetic vitamin A were found to cause problems and even contribute to birth defects. But natural vitamin A found in liver is an extremely important nutrient for human health and does not cause problems except in extremely large amounts.
The Merck Manual cites vitamin A toxicity in Arctic explorers who developed drowsiness, irritability, headaches and vomiting, with subsequent peeling of the skin, within a few hours of ingesting several million units of vitamin A from polar bear or seal liver. These foods are incredibly high in Vitamin A and need to be eaten with foods that are high in Vitamin D such as blubber from these animals. When A and D are in balance, that is a ration of 10:1, toxicity doesn’t occur so easily.
The putative toxic dose of 100,000 IU per day is contained in two-and-one-half 100-gram servings of duck liver or about three 100-gram servings of beef liver. From the work ofWeston Price, we can assume that the amount in primitive diets was about 50,000 IU per day.
A good recommendation for liver is one 100-gram serving of beef, lamb, bison or duck liver (about 4 ounces) once or twice a week, providing about 50,000 IU vitamin A per serving. Chicken liver, which is lower in vitamin A, may be consumed more frequently. If you experience headaches or joint pains at this level, cut back until the symptoms go away.
Eat it Raw
If you are trying to balance Liver yin deficiency eating your liver raw will nourish the yin more than cooked. Eating Liver raw ensures you get the full dose of B6 and B12, CoQ10, enzymes and possibly the anti-fatigue factor. It’s yin energy soothes dried liver symptoms (itchiness, headaches, dry eyes, muscle tightness, irritability).
The best way to eat raw liver is to freeze it for 14 days to avoid any parasitic infection (unlikely but possible especially in those with impaired immune systems). When frozen, cut it into teaspoon sized pieces and put them into little coin bags. Keep them in your freezer and use one baggie at at time, chopping into little pills to swallow with a drink. The primary benefit of swallowing liver pills frozen, is you can’t taste it. I take my liver pills with raw milk for the extra nourishment and so I don’t burp up the taste.
The physician Max Gerson used raw liver juice, extracted with a special juicer that pressed out the liquid, in his original healing protocol with pancreatic cancer patients. His daughter, Charlotte Gerson, later dropped this part of the protocol because of the unavailability of fresh clean liver without bacterial contamination. Now a crude liver extract injection or desiccated liver tablets are used in the current protocol. However, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, a New York doctor who treats cancer holistically, insists that all his patients eat raw liver.
Also grate frozen liver into the yolk of an egg or add it to tomato juice.
LIVER RECIPES
Lynn Razaitis, Leader of the Atlanta, Georgia Chapter of the Weston A Price Foundation, has found some wonderful medieval European recipes. She recommends florilegium.org, where participants provide translations and comments on recipes in old cookbooks.
She says,”Ancient cookbooks even describe the use of liver to thicken sauces, apparently by pressing raw puréed liver through a fine strainer and adding it to sauce that was then carefully heated but not boiled. (During Lent, fish livers served to thicken sauces!) As long as the liver flavor does not overpower the flavor of the sauce, this could be a good way to get liver into your family without them ever knowing it!
A liver recipe from a 1529 Spanish cookbook goes like this: “Take onions and cut them very small, like fingers, and fry them gently with fatty bacon; and then take the liver of a kid or a lamb or a goat and cut them into slices the size of a half walnut, and fry it gently with the onion until the liver loses its color; then take a crustless piece of toasted bread soaked in white vinegar and grind it well, and dissolve it with sweet white wine; and then strain it through a woolen cloth; and then cast it over the onion and the liver, all together in the casserole; and cast in ground cinnamon; and cook until it is well thickened and when it is cooked, prepare dishes.”
http://editor.nourishedmagazine.com.au/articles/anti-fatigue-factor-of-liver
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.
Ershoff divided laboratory rats into three groups. The first ate a basic diet, fortified with 11 vitamins. The second ate the same diet, along with an additional supply of vitamin B complex. The third ate the original diet, but instead of vitamin B complex received 10 percent of rations as powdered liver.
A 1975 article published in Prevention magazine described the experiment as follows: “After several weeks, the animals were placed one by one into a drum of cold water from which they could not climb out. They literally were forced to sink or swim. Rats in the first group swam for an average 13.3 minutes before giving up. The second group, which had the added fortifications of B vitamins, swam for an average of 13.4 minutes. Of the last group of rats, the ones receiving liver, three swam for 63, 83 and 87 minutes. The other nine rats in this group were still swimming vigorously at the end of two hours when the test was terminated. Something in the liver had prevented them from becoming exhausted. To this day scientists have not been able to pin a label on this anti-fatigue factor.””
From “The Liver Files” on the Weston A Price Website.
The wisdom of ancient chinese practises, where it is common to heal a complaint related to an organ by prescribing the consumption of that particular organ, corresponds to these findings. So if, like me, you are cleansing, increasing your exercise or in any way healing your liver at the moment, try raw liver. Of course, it must be organic! And be sure to freeze it for 14 days to avoid any parasitic infection (unlikely but possible). When frozen, cut it into teaspoon sized pieces and put them into little coin bags. Keep them in your freezer and when you’re after a boost, chop one into little pills to swallow. The primary benefit of swallowing liver pills frozen, is you can’t taste it. I take my liver pills with raw milk for the extra nourishment and so I don’t burp up the taste.
About the Author...
Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine, Chief Nourisher and Mother of three is very grateful to live in Byron Bay and be able to share all she has learned about Nourishment. She has trained as an Acupuncturist (unfinished), Kinesiologist (finished) and parent (never finished). She serves the Weston A Price Foundation as a chapter leader. She loves sauerkraut, kangaroo tail stew, home made ice cream, her husband Wes and her kids Isaiah, Brynn and Ronin (in no particular order…well maybe ice cream first).
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