It only makes you react a certain way because you weren't raised on it.

Babies will eat and love whatever they are fed. Kids around the world eat a variety of things, all the result of whatever their parents feed them while they're being raised.

If you really can't stomach the taste, just slip some organ meat into your chilli........

I will never understand why people force themselves (or others) to eat something they don't like.

That said, have you tried various kinds of liver/kidneys? I can't stand beef liver, but I like chicken livers (and hearts, gizzards, and kidneys). They have a milder flavor. I also like liverwurst.

If you really can't stomach any of it, there are other options like dried liver capsules. I don't see any reason to put your body through the stress of forcing down something that makes you want to vomit.

Unfortunately palatability isn't necessarily tied to healthfulness. If it were, no one would get addicted to junk food.

I think it was majkinetor who said essentially that there's a learning curve for your brain to associate certain foods with the nutrients they contain and that frequent exposure to an acquired taste like organs would eventually result in a desire for them. I'm not sure if that's true as stated, but it makes a fair amount of sense. It would seem that the whole sensation of taste is intended to lead us toward things that are nutritious and away from things that are toxic. You'll notice for example that if you restrict salt for long enough and then eat some straight it's less salty than if you habitually eat a lot of it.

How are you preparing it? Sounds like you may be in need of a new recipe or two to try to get you to like it a bit more. There are many good liverwurst and pate recipes out in the paleo blog world. I would recommend starting there with a pate with some other strong spices and flavours that you really do like and work yourself up to liking it.

Also - I find chicken livers to be easier to stomach, so maybe go to chicken liver for a while and work up to beef.

Speak for yourself! Organ meats are the most delicious.

I would recommend revising your question from the universal "us" to the personal "me," in which case, I would have no way of knowing why those particular foods make you nauseous. Do you know why "we" find extremely bitter, sugarless chocolate delicious? I meant, why "I" find it such? I truly do.

I'm changing my story on this question. I used to say genetics but now I say gut flora.

I used to say genetics because all fermented dairy (yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream) tasted like spoiled food to me and, yes, made me want to vomit. Milk itself wasn't quite as bad; it merely tasted awful.

Anyhow, after 64 years like that I started drinking water kefir last fall and within 2 months I was eating yogurt and it tasted GOOD. It worked so well I started making yogurt at home. At Christmas I took a risk and ate some ice cream, a food which had been making me sick before water kefir. No problems at all, and I ate a pint per day several times during the holidays.

I don't believe my genetics changed. I believe my gut flora changed. I think similar changes could happen to someone who finds the taste of liver nauseating--I just don't know what the proper "probiotic" would be to solve the problem. But my nickel says it might reflect the gut flora rather than genes.

Another possible thought process: liver tastes very good to me if I don't eat it too often. Hmm. So my taste for it seems to be self-regulated. Is it possible that if you don't need liver, it tastes awful?

I was raised on "variety meats"... but didn't really care for all of them...

As a kid, I had a LIKE, and a HATE table:

Like:
Calves Brains and Eggs
Sweetbreads pan fried (dusted in Flour... boo)
oxtail soup with egg noodles
chicken gizzards

HATE:
Liver
Kidney
Pickled Tongue/Heart (my dad and grandpa ate this crap on saltines like it was the antidote)
Chitlins

Now that I'm a grown-up, you can add "stewed tongue" to the "Like" category, and you can move "Liver" up there as well. AND Spleen, which has the texture and flavor of liver, with considerably less of that metallic iron taste (which is pretty mellow in calves liver anyway).

Tastes change. Even though I didn't like those foods, none of them made me almost vomit. The only dish that has ever caused a reaction like that was a fermented fish curry that a friend of mine from Malaysia warned me not to eat... but I promised her I was adventurous... swallowing that bite and keeping it down felt like it took me 45 minutes.

I enjoy all the offal meats, but here is the suggestion I found here on Paleohacks. Cook the organ. Cut up the organ. Wrap two ounce portions in wax paper. Freeze . In a few hours unwrap, salt, pepper, dip in mustard, dip in salsa as much as you need. Repeat next day. You should begin to be able to let it thaw more each day or each week. Start with tongue,move on to heart, next liver and then kidney. Make sure its grass fed. Lamb is milder than cow. I find goat even milder than lamb. good luck

My husband and I are both sensitive to the taste and texture of cooked heme. I promised him when I got married that I would NEVER cook liver. 25 years later and the promise still stands!

I ate the meat off of some boiled beef neck bones (the main goal was to make a nice beef broth) and the mix of equal parts fat, cartilage, and meat really turned my stomach. A few times I had to stop and breathe, relax, and assure myself that it wasn't going to hurt me. It was a total textural thing because the flavor was really just that of beef.

My discomfort with the strange texture was due to a lifetime of conditioning that said "spit it out!" I was able to supersede this reaction with reason, and may be able to eventually create a strong enough connection between the texture of cartilage and gooey connective tissue and health to enjoy it, but the old conditioning will always be there.

In this sense, food preferences are absolutely shaped by early exposure. Look at some of the "favorite" foods of other cultures featured on Bizarre Foods if you need any proof.

However, there are individual differences in taste sensitivity. Just as some people see better than others, some people taste more than others.

For someone with hypersensitive taste-buds (a "supertaster") the experience of eating organ meats may never be pleasurable, no matter how often they are exposed to them.

N=1 does not equate to N=All

Not all livers taste the same.

For example, the liver my mom makes (with onions) is just perfect, and absolutely no smell and no bad taste. But once I bought a liver to cook one day - it stunk up the whole house and tasted like.... I cannot even find a decent word for it.

Anyway, it depends on the quality of the liver and the way it is cleaned (all the bile ducts need to be cut out) and the way it is cooked. A lot of people soak liver in milk for a few hours to get rid of this smell.

My advice: try chicken livers and cut out the bile ducts. You will love the taste and you will ask for more!

I never really tried to "stretch my taste buds" when I was straddling the line between the SAD and Taubsian paleo, in fact I don't think I tried much until I went beyond that, to total carnivore. So, I don't know when the change in tastes kicked in. All I know is, now that I'm total carnivore, I'm not repulsed by any animal flesh so far. Oh, I can live without pig's ears, I guess (I'd rather eat linoleum), but that's texture, not taste.

BTW, make sure you don't overcooked the liver. It gets chalky if it isn't bloody inside.

They don't make me almost vomit - they simply turn me into an absolute glutton! I love them - kidney stroganov is my number one favourite meal. Also kidney and beet in a mustard and cream sauce. Divine.

Try finding different recipes? And if you soak sliced kidney in either milk or lemon juice and water for an hour, a lot of the pee smell goes away!

It tastes better fresh, like right out of the animal. Even a few days kills it for me. Maybe all the iron/copper in it makes it decay faster...

I ate liver as a child, and liked it, so I don't have an issue with the taste. However, when I first started eating liver again, about a year ago, it did make me feel vaguely nauseous. I attributed this to my not being used to such a high nutrient food. I no longer get that reaction.

I love beef liver but chicken liver is gross. It's a matter of individual taste, and it's partly psychological and very influenced by what we eat and like/dislike in childhood. Some of it I'm sure is genetic. 'Supertasting' runs in families.

I started liking liver after I stopped having my mom cook it for me. Her pork chops were worse... Bless my ex for showing me that food does not have to be cooked to death.

Pâté.

I mention it on nearly every liver thread. Homemade pâté is a great way to get exactly what you want (with eggs, veggies, butter, not milk and bread, for e.g.) and vary the level of sweetness (from the veggies).

Make it. Love it.

Love liver and kidneys and never had a problem with either. Especially since I can get a pack of chicken livers for less than £1. A quick fry-up with some butter and instant lunch :)

To be honest, it's an acquired taste that I never bothered to acquire. :)

It's a getting-used-to thing. I grew up with that stuff in Greece, so I have no trouble eating liver, lungs, kidneys, hearts, tongues, spleen/pancreas, AND tripe. From goats, sheep, beef. My favorite part is the tail of the goat.

While I will agree that the liver does not store fat soluble toxins, it does however package them internally and then sends them off to be stored in the fat. So at any given time there are fat soluble toxins in the process of being packaged inside the liver. But I think that argument of the kind and quantity of toxins in the liver derailed his main point which is that if you find the taste of liver so unpleasant why force yourself to eat it? And on that point I will agree. I will agree that the liver contains fat soluble toxins, I will agree that there are more wholesome alternatives, and I will respect your dislike of the flavor. Liver lovers are not bad people, eating liver is not evil. But it is also not an imperitive, and there is no reason to force it upon others let alone ourselves. It is true that in the past doctors prescribed liver to undernourished people, then again they also prescribed bloodletting to cure anemia. If it makes you gag, eat some steak instead.

Liver is the shit. Never tried kidneys, although I'd love to. But liver, any liver is good in my book... Chicken, beef, pork.. you name it. And chicken hearts? I think that's a meat orgasm in my mouth.

Well first of all, I don’t know any actual authorities on nutrition that will extol the virtues of eating liver. The liver's main function is to remove and store toxins from the blood. And this toxic organ is supposed to be good for us? Another function of the liver is to manufacture bile; bile has several functions and effects. One of the effects is to contribute with billirubin in making our feces brown and is partially responsible for the characteristic odor of fecal matter. Which is why some people who have sensitive noses find that liver and feces smell similar. SO between liver smelling like feces, and being full of toxins, the argument seems to be that it is full nutrients. If I was starving and it came between life and death I would eat the disgusting thing to save my life. But there is nothing of nutritional value in liver that is not readily available in more healthy, safe, and most importantly delicious foods. So there it is. Liver is unhealthy, tastes disgusting, and does not contain nutrients unavailable in other food sources. Why are you forcing yourself to eat liver again?

For some reason I am not able to comment on the comment. Now when I said the liver removes and stores toxins from the blood, I did not mean that the liver magically packages and removes the toxins from the body, it stores the toxins. I thought that point was crystal clear I hope it is now. I'd prefer to debate the facts and would appreciate if you didn't use superstition, opinion, and fallacies as the basis of your argument. That straw man you tried is bad form. Shame on you. ARe you argiung to win or arguing to find truth? I prefer truth. How about you?