Many people have a similar reaction to the consumption of organ meat in general (e.g., hearts, liver, tongue, kidneys, brain, feet, ears, stomach (tripe), intestines (chitterlings), etc.) Brian Wansink in Marketing Nutrition explains how the American government during World War II, sending typically preferred muscle meat overseas for the troops, were trying to coax a reluctant public to eat more nutritionally-dense organ meat.
Occasionally on my political blog, I will discuss feijoada, a Brazilian meal concept I experienced during my 1995 work trips to São Paulo. The Brazilian restaurants where I ate served feijoada on Wednesdays and Saturdays; it attracts a large crowd of yuppies. There were two adjacent buffet lines, emphasizing a variety of organ meats (including ears and tongue) and black beans. [I'm an adventuresome eater and tried a variety of dishes, including pig ears; I think it must be an acquired taste...] I was told that the traditional meal dated back to the days of Brazilian slavery when the slaveowners would harvest the choice cuts from a hog (e.g., ham, bacon, and other muscle meat), leaving the organs. I also noticed some churrascarias (Brazilian steakhouses) serve dozens of chicken hearts on skewers (thumbs up). [Waiters in churrrascarias circulate around tables bearing large chunks of various meats, from which they carve servings onto your dinner plate.]
I have observed when I roasted dozens of chickens and turkeys over the years, the first thing I generally look to eat is the giblets (or miscellaneous organ meats) for the poultry (often packaged separately from the bird). Eberling and Geary argue that organ meats are non-plant superfoods; they claim that in mankind's early dietary history and in many cultures, nutrient-dense organ meats were often preferred to muscle meat. In fact, native groups in the far north often eat organ meats in place of scarce plant-based food sources. There are a number of distinctive nutritional benefits depending on the type of meat, including iron (liver), B vitamins, vitamin D, CoQ10 (heart), Omega-3, CLA and various important minerals. For those not preferring the source meats, the authors suggest certain products containing a seasoned mixture of organ meats, such as Braunsweiger, liverwurst, and head cheese. They also point out that the amount of certain nutrients depends on the source animal's diet, e.g., pasture or flaxseed versus conventional grains.
An interesting related discussion is the anecdotal evidence that many wild animals, after killing their prey, will target the organ meat first. (One can argue that "the world is complex", because what an animal chooses to eat may depend on factors like when the animal last ate, the relative abundance of prey, complementary sources of nutrition, etc.)
I believe in the principle of nutritional diversity--having noted in past posts that cherrypicking of foods (e.g., filtering out egg yolks or refusing to eat fattier dark meat from poultry) arbitrarily excludes some excellent sources of nutrients for one's daily diet. Thus, I'm making an explicit attempt within my own diet to rotate in cold-water fish, beef and other red meat (buffalo and ostrich), poultry, pork and organ meats.
