 With the popularity of the carnivore and ketogenic diet lately, more and more people are talking about organ meats as superfoods, liver, cod liver. A lot of people are even promoting these organ meat based supplements. Then of course there are the lesser known superfoods that are high quality animal foods like salmon roe, aka caviar, bone marrow, brain, shellfish, like oysters, foods that people aren't making money on selling you. But today we are going to discuss kidneys as they are very similar to liver from a nutrient standpoint. Just like liver, kidney has all of the nutrients your body needs. The water soluble B and C vitamins, all of the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, K2, all of the minerals, elements and essential fatty acids that your body needs. There are some slight differences between liver and kidneys. Liver is drastically higher in vitamin A, but this isn't unusual as liver is the only significant source of vitamin A found in nature. It also has a much higher copper content, which isn't actually a good thing because we have to keep our copper to zinc ratio in balance, which can be hard to do if you're eating liver every day. Kidney has slightly less vitamins overall across the board, about 70% of what is found in liver and this is still an incredible amount considering the nutrient density of liver. Kidneys do have more iron and selenium, about 20% more in iron and selenium is a bit higher, but this isn't that significant because both of these foods are incredibly high in these nutrients. It's definitely worth mentioning that vitamin C and vitamin E are contained in both liver and kidneys as these aren't vitamins that people really think they're obtaining from animal foods. And keep in mind how the animal is raised directly influences the nutrient profile of the meat. All the vitamins, minerals, elements, essential fatty acids count on the animal being on its natural diet of grass or forage. Due to modern conventional agriculture, the meat we're eating now isn't nearly as healthy. I've seen statistics showing that liver from grain fed cattle actually has little to no vitamin A and I'm sure this applies to all nutrients across the board. Imagine, the animal is starving, it's on a poor quality diet, there's no nutrients in the diet, there aren't going to be nutrients in the flesh of the animal. Since liver is so high in vitamin A and copper, it creates the issue of having to obtain the other fat soluble vitamins in large amounts to maintain nutrient homeostasis. All of these nutrients are synergistic and work with each other so we need to get all of the fat soluble vitamins in certain amounts, especially if we're eating liver every single day. Our indigenous ancestors weren't having liver every day, we have created unnatural access to food and even when the food is healthy or very good for you, it's not necessarily a good thing to always consume more of it. If you're eating liver on a daily basis, you need to make sure to supplement vitamin D3 or get some sun. You have to eat fermented food or supplement vitamin K2 and you definitely need some extra zinc in your diet to keep that copper to zinc ratio in balance. Consuming dairy that has high calcium can also chelate zinc which might cause issues if you're eating liver on a daily basis. With kidneys, however, you are able to obtain a very high amount of overall nutrition without throwing anything off. And this is especially for B vitamins. The only thing that might happen from eating too many kidneys is that you pee out some of the water soluble B vitamins in your urine. Yes, liver is slightly higher in vitamin B12 but when you're throwing your nutrient homeostasis off by consuming liver every day, that's where you run into issues. So that's the main reason I like kidneys so much, not having to worry about eating all of those other foods to get those nutrients. But kidney does have a hidden benefit. Dow, DAO, diamine oxidase. It's an enzyme that is produced by the kidneys to process histamine in the body. Histamine is a neurotransmitter involved in immune system response and it actually is contained in the kidney of an animal when you eat it. So people with a histamine intolerance might benefit from consuming kidneys and not only do they contain the DAO enzyme that actually helps process histamine, it contains all of the nutrients that your body needs to produce DAO, DAO. It's definitely a piece of the puzzle in regards to solving histamine intolerance which I'll talk about next week. But let's cut to the chase. Why is no one eating kidneys? Because they taste like piss. However there is a quality factor here. Younger properly raised animals will yield much milder, better tasting organs. This applies to liver as well, kidneys of course any part of the animal. Fresher meat also makes the flavor more mild. I've literally eaten freshly slaughtered lamb kidneys hours after the animal was killed and they don't really taste like anything. So if you are having issues with food powder ability and not enjoying the taste of the food, you want to buy higher quality, younger and fresher. In regards to preparation, lately I've been purchasing veal or lamb kidneys and letting them soak overnight in a salt water solution. What this does is draw out any of the negative flavors that were left in the kidney. I would probably use milk if I wasn't allergic and after you soak them in salt water or salt and milk, you can then prepare them however you like and kidneys are delicious. You could pan sear them, you could poach them in milk, poach them in butter, throw them on the grill, a little bit of salt at the end, maybe finish them with some more butter. Kidneys can be just as delicious as any food if prepared properly. But you have to put in the extra effort with soaking it, that's the key here. Or you could be like me, chop it up into tiny bits and swallow it down by the spoonful raw. I would try to keep the kidney on the rare side if you do eat it to preserve most of the nutrients but eating cooked meat is far better than eating no meat at all. Thank you guys for joining me today. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon and share the video if you can. If you guys would like to support me further, definitely check out Frankie's Free Range Meat. We do sell veal kidneys and we might have some other kidneys in the future. We also have a bunch of organ meats, grass fed beef. Just recently added 100% grass fed wagyu. Definitely check that out, frankiesfreerangemeat.com. Thanks again for joining me guys and enjoy the rest of your day. If you'd like to reach out to me for one on one consultations, please email Frank A. Tifano at gmail.com.