Why Beef Organs Deserve a Spot in Your Diet
For a long time, eating the whole animal was simply part of eating meat.
Liver, heart, kidney and other organs weren't obscure ingredients or a nutrition trend. They were food. Across different cultures and cuisines, organ meats have been cooked, minced, grilled, stewed and turned into pâtés, sausages and plenty else besides.
Somewhere along the way, many of us became much more familiar with a steak than a spleen.
That's worth reconsidering.
Beef organs have distinct nutritional profiles, with different organs naturally providing different combinations and concentrations of vitamins, minerals and other compounds.
And there's a straightforward biological reason for that: liver, heart, kidney and spleen are different tissues performing different jobs within the animal. They aren't nutritionally interchangeable.
So rather than treating “organ meat” as one single food category, it makes more sense to look at the organs themselves.
Here's what that actually means. Minus the superfood theatre.
What are organ meats?
Organ meats, sometimes called offal, are the edible organs of an animal.
In beef, that can include:
- liver
- heart
- kidney
- spleen
- tongue
- pancreas
- other edible parts beyond conventional muscle meat
They have been used in traditional cooking for generations, although their popularity varies enormously between cultures and households.
From a food-composition perspective, they're interesting because the tissues themselves are different.
A heart isn't simply liver with another name. A spleen isn't nutritionally identical to kidney. And none of them has exactly the same composition as conventional beef muscle.
That's the central idea worth understanding.
Beef liver: probably the best-known organ meat
If you've heard people talking about organ meats, beef liver is usually where the conversation starts.
Fresh beef liver is compositionally quite different from conventional beef muscle meat and is commonly identified in food-composition data as containing nutrients including:
- preformed vitamin A, or retinol
- vitamin B12
- folate
- riboflavin
- iron
- copper
Liver can contain comparatively high concentrations of some of these nutrients in relatively small amounts of food.
That's interesting enough.
It doesn't need to become “complete nutrition”, “nature's multivitamin” or proof that everybody should be eating liver every day.
Sometimes a nutrient fact is just a nutrient fact. That's fine.
Vitamin A and retinol
One particularly important feature of liver is its preformed vitamin A content.
Preformed vitamin A, including retinol, is found in animal-derived foods such as liver.
That's different from provitamin A carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, which are found in many plant foods and can be converted by the body into vitamin A.
The distinction matters when talking about liver because it can contain very high concentrations of preformed vitamin A.
More is not automatically better.
Portion size and frequency matter, particularly because excessive preformed vitamin A intake can be a concern during pregnancy.
Anyone who is pregnant, trying to conceive or has specific nutritional or medical requirements should seek advice from an appropriately qualified health professional about liver intake.
We go much further into retinol, liver composition and sensible intake in our separate Beef Liver 101 guide.
Beef heart: technically an organ, but a very different one
Heart is an organ, but structurally it has a lot in common with muscle meat for the fairly obvious reason that the heart itself is muscular tissue.
It has a firm texture, a recognisably beefy flavour and can be grilled, braised, slow-cooked or minced with other cuts.
Its composition is also distinct.
Food-composition data identifies beef heart as containing nutrients including iron, zinc and B-group vitamins.
Heart also naturally contains compounds such as carnitine and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10).
What's particularly interesting is that published food-composition research has measured markedly different CoQ10 concentrations across beef tissues.
In one analysis, approximate CoQ10 concentrations were:
- beef heart: around 110 µg/g
- beef liver: around 33 µg/g
- beef muscle: around 23 µg/g
The useful takeaway isn't that CoQ10 makes heart a performance food.
It's that different tissues genuinely have different chemical compositions.
Heart is not simply “another organ” thrown into a blend for variety.
No performance mythology required.
Beef kidney: its own B-vitamin profile
Beef kidney has a distinct flavour and, once again, a distinct nutritional composition.
Food-composition data identifies kidney as containing nutrients including vitamin B12, riboflavin and selenium.
More detailed laboratory analysis of raw beef offal has also shown meaningful differences between organs.
In one recent analysis, vitamin B12 concentrations were substantially higher in kidney than in heart, while riboflavin was also appreciably higher in kidney than heart.
That doesn't make kidney “better” than heart.
It tells us something much more useful: the organs aren't nutritionally interchangeable.
A blend containing kidney therefore has a different composition from one made only from liver or heart.
No detox language required.
Kidney is interesting enough without pretending eating one somehow “cleanses” yours.
Beef spleen: where the iron story gets interesting
Spleen isn't exactly fighting for space next to the mince at most Australian supermarkets.
From a food-composition perspective, though, it may be one of the more interesting beef organs.
Published analysis of bovine viscera has found substantially different total iron concentrations across conventional beef cuts and organs.
Approximate amounts reported per 100 g in one peer-reviewed study were:
- ordinary beef cuts: around 1.4 mg
- kidney: around 3.0 mg
- heart: around 3.2 mg
- liver: around 6.0 mg
- spleen: around 31.2 mg
That is a substantial compositional difference.
The same research also measured haem iron and found that a large proportion of the iron in spleen occurred in haem form.
Again, this is a food-composition fact.
It does not mean spleen should be marketed as a treatment for iron deficiency, a replacement for prescribed iron or an “energy food”.
It simply tells us that spleen has a very different iron profile from liver, heart, kidney and conventional beef muscle.
Which leads neatly to the difference between haem and non-haem iron.
Haem iron vs non-haem iron: what's the difference?
Dietary iron occurs principally in two forms: haem iron and non-haem iron.
Haem iron is found in animal tissues, including meat and organ meats.
Non-haem iron is found in plant foods and is also present in some animal foods.
The distinction matters because the two forms behave differently during digestion.
Haem iron is generally more bioavailable, while the absorption of non-haem iron is influenced more strongly by other components of the diet.
That doesn't make plant sources of iron “bad” or animal sources automatically “better”.
They're simply different chemical forms.
And the spleen data is a useful real-world example of why simply saying a food “contains iron” doesn't tell the whole composition story.
For anyone concerned about iron deficiency or their individual iron requirements, food information isn't a substitute for appropriate medical assessment.
Iron status is something to test, not guess.
What does “nutrient-dense” actually mean?
“Nutrient-dense” gets thrown around so much that it can start sounding like another wellness buzzword.
The underlying idea is much simpler.
Many organ meats contain comparatively high concentrations of particular vitamins and minerals for relatively small serving sizes, which is why they're often described as nutrient-dense foods.
But importantly, different organs are dense in different things.
A liver-heavy conversation can make it sound as though every organ brings essentially the same nutrition to the table.
They don't.
Heart has one composition.
Kidney has another.
Spleen has another again.
That doesn't mean combining them creates “complete nutrition” or a magical full spectrum of everything the body needs.
No single food does.
It means dietary variety can exist within the animal itself, not just between beef, vegetables, fruit, grains and other food groups.
That's less dramatic than calling organs the ultimate superfood.
It's also more interesting.
Are all beef organs nutritionally the same?
Definitely not.
A simple way to think about the differences is:
Beef liver
Contains nutrients including retinol, vitamin B12, folate, riboflavin, iron and copper.
Beef heart
Contains its own mix of nutrients and naturally occurring compounds. Published analysis has found substantially higher CoQ10 concentrations in heart than in liver or conventional beef muscle.
Beef kidney
Has a distinct B-vitamin profile, with published analysis finding considerably higher vitamin B12 and riboflavin concentrations than in heart.
Beef spleen
Has been shown in published bovine-viscera research to contain markedly higher total iron concentrations than conventional beef muscle, heart, kidney or liver, with a substantial proportion occurring as haem iron.
These differences are why talking about “organ meat” as though it's one uniform ingredient misses half the story.
Why a blend of organs is compositionally different from liver alone
This is where the science becomes particularly relevant to Pheed's Beef Organ Complex.
Pheed's supplier specification for the freeze-dried organ raw material identifies the blend as:
- 25% beef liver
- 25% beef heart
- 25% beef kidney
- 25% beef spleen
That matters because the four ingredients are compositionally different.
Combining them creates a different food-composition profile from using liver alone.
Pheed's analysed freeze-dried organ blend reported measurable amounts of nutrients including:
- vitamin B12
- iron
- folate
- riboflavin
- niacin
- pantothenic acid
- retinol
- copper
- zinc
- protein
Those results are useful evidence about the supplier's analysed freeze-dried raw-material blend.
They're not permission to turn the product into “complete nutrition”, claim a broader range of health benefits or assume that every finished capsule batch has exactly the same composition.
The useful fact is much simpler. Different organs contribute different compositions, so a four-organ blend is compositionally different from liver alone.
Different doesn't automatically mean better.
It means different.
Fresh organs, freeze-dried blend and finished capsules: three different things
This distinction is worth understanding because nutrition information gets blurred very quickly online.
There are really three separate evidence categories here.
1. Fresh individual organs
When we're talking about the composition of fresh liver, heart, kidney or spleen, we can look to recognised food-composition databases and published food research.
That's where information such as the spleen iron comparisons or heart CoQ10 measurements comes from.
2. A freeze-dried organ blend
Once those organs have been processed and combined into a freeze-dried blend, we're describing a different material.
The most useful evidence is analysis of that processed material itself.
That's what Pheed's supplier COA gives us.
3. Finished Pheed Beef Organ Capsules
A finished capsule product is another step again.
It includes the processed organ material in a particular serving size, along with the capsule itself, and it belongs to a particular manufactured batch.
Product-specific nutrition claims about the capsules should therefore be supported by evidence appropriate to the finished product.
The principle is simple. The evidence should match the thing you're actually describing.
Fresh spleen data doesn't automatically prove the nutrient content of a freeze-dried blend.
Supplier blend data doesn't automatically prove the composition of every finished capsule batch.
That might sound fussy.
It's actually just good science.
What about freeze-drying?
Freeze-drying, also known as lyophilisation, is a preservation process.
In simplified terms, the food is frozen and much of its water is then removed under reduced pressure through a process called sublimation.
The result is a product containing substantially less moisture than the fresh starting material.
That change matters when comparing nutrition figures.
You can't take a value for 100 grams of fresh heart, liver, kidney or spleen and assume the same figure applies to 100 grams of freeze-dried powder.
The most sensible way to know what's present after processing is to analyse the processed material.
In Pheed's case, our analysis of our freeze-dried organ blend found measurable amounts of a range of vitamins, minerals and protein after processing.
How to eat more organ meat without making dinner weird
You don't have to jump straight from never eating organs to a plate containing four different pieces of offal.
There are much easier ways in.
Start with heart
Heart can be one of the more approachable organs because its texture and flavour are closer to conventional beef.
Slice it thinly and grill it, slow-cook it or mix minced heart with regular beef mince.
Mix liver into mince
If the flavour of liver is too strong on its own, a small amount can be minced through beef for burgers, meatballs, bolognese or chilli.
Start conservatively.
Liver does not believe in subtlety.
Try pâté
Pâté is popular for a reason.
Liver combined with fat, seasoning and aromatics is a very different eating experience from a large piece of pan-fried liver.
Look beyond liver
Kidney has a long history in pies and slow-cooked dishes, while different food cultures have their own ways of preparing heart, tongue and other parts of the animal.
Spleen is less common in everyday Australian cooking, but it also appears in traditional dishes around the world.
There is no nutritional requirement to eat every organ.
Try what actually works in your diet.
A little perspective on portion size
The fact that some organ meats can contain high concentrations of particular nutrients is a reason to eat them thoughtfully, not endlessly.
Liver is the clearest example because of its preformed vitamin A content.
Dietary needs also vary according to age, sex, pregnancy, overall diet, medical conditions and other factors.
So the sensible approach to organ meats isn't “more is always better”.
And the science we've just covered shouldn't be interpreted as “more organs = more benefits” either.
Different organs have different compositions.
That's the point.
What if you simply don't eat organ meat?
Fair.
Plenty of people understand why organs are interesting and still have no desire to cook kidney on a Tuesday night.
For people who don't regularly prepare fresh organ meats, Pheed also makes Beef Organ Capsules containing beef liver, heart, kidney and spleen in a convenient capsule format.
The four-organ blend is compositionally different from liver alone because it contains four different tissues.
That doesn't mean the capsules automatically inherit every nutrient figure reported for fresh liver, heart, kidney or spleen.
Nor should the supplier's raw-material analysis be treated as finished-product testing.
Product-specific nutritional information should be assessed using evidence appropriate to the finished product.
So, do beef organs deserve a spot in your diet?
They can.
Not because they're an “ultimate superfood”.
Not because combining four organs somehow creates complete nutrition.
And not because one serving is going to transform your health.
They're simply foods that modern diets often overlook and they're far more compositionally diverse than the catch-all term “organ meat” suggests.
Liver, heart, kidney and spleen are different tissues with different food-composition profiles.
Heart can contain substantially more naturally occurring CoQ10 than liver or conventional beef muscle.
Kidney has its own B-vitamin profile.
Spleen contains dramatically more iron than conventional beef cuts, with much of it in haem form.
Liver brings its own distinctive composition, including high concentrations of preformed vitamin A.
That variety is the interesting bit.
You don't need to turn it into health mythology.
If you're curious, start small.
The whole cow doesn't need to arrive at dinner on day one.
