i hope someone says we dont have to, but im afraid thats not the answer. it grosses me out, too but its like a crazy superfood and so important, so im trying to find ways to choke down the organ.

see what i did there?

It has nutrients in it that you need, like choline. Try liverwurst or braunschweiger first, and see how it goes.

No, of course not. You may have to work harder to get all your nutrients - but nobody HAS to eat anything. Try some bone broths or marrow - those are pretty good and tasty. That said, there are ways to sneak offal into other things like chili or freeze it, slice it into tiny chunks and put it in pills. I only eat it once in a great while - but maybe I could be healthier if I had it more often.

The theory is that people in paleo times (and also most modern hunter gatherers) eat nose to tail and they get much better nutrition that way. It's how the Inuit avoid Scurvy without getting any vitamin C from fruit. Offal, especially liver, is packed with a much higher vitamin and mineral content compared to muscle meat.

Good alternatives are eggs, caviar (and any other fish roe), raw milk if it does not give you issues, and anything you can eat whole like small fish, muscles, and similar.

On what level? Muscle meat is high in tryptophan which may be inflammatory. Lack of gelatin in our diet probably causes depletion of glycine and proline which are conditionally essential amino acids.

You can do with out the nasty bits. But we're talking optimal health here. Your diet is probably already way better than 99% of America's. Congratulations. However, if you want to bring you game to the next level, let's turn up some offal. It's not that bad (I kind of enjoy it now). And it is nutrient DENSE ( http://nourishedkitchen.com/best-sources-vitamins-minerals/ ). Plus, its cheap. So just try it a couple times, find out if you can stand some organs (preferably liver or kidneys).

Eat lots of shell fish and some Grassfed dairy and you should be fine without offal. If you don't eat shellfish a few times a week or dairy I'd Definetely make an effort to like offal.

I feel ya! I've had a grassfed liver in my freezer for about six months; haven't brought myself to cook it! You don't have to eat liver and kidneys but I'm trying to work up to it- I recently tried marrow (delish) and made chili with chunks of cow heart mixed in along with ground beef; it wasn't bad. I saw Denise Minger post on another thread that oysters are comparably nutritious to liver, and that made me very happy!

If you want to eat offal without really eating it, you can get freeze-dried organs and glands in capsule form. For example: Natural Sources Raw Multiple Glandular has liver, brain, stomach, kidney, heart, spleen, pancreas, duodenum, thyroid, thymus, adrenal, parotid, and pituitary.

I took someone's advice. I think I might have read it on paleo hacks, but I don't remember. I bought 2 kilos of ground beef mixed with 1/2 kilo of beef liver. You can't taste it when it's cooked (but it looks a little gross before).

I cooked it up with very strong flavoured ingredents to make sure my daughter didn't notice. She though the dishes I prepared were great.

Little does she know.. waaa haaa haaaaa!

It's not a large amount, but she'd never eat offal otherwise.

You might find something like beef heart do-able - it's really just muscle, after all...