organ meats

Question
Hi Goeffrey. My name is Evan. I have wrote here a few times before. Recently I asked your advice about organ meats. Well, I finally ordered some good quality organ meats and I have a few followup questions. So far I have tried bison heart and bison liver. The bison heart was really great. It was easier to slice than any muscle meat I've tried and it had a nice mild flavor. It also gave me a lot of energy. Are there any other organ meats that are similar to the heart's texture and mild flavor?
I didn't really enjoy the liver. It tasted ok but the texture was hard to take. Also it took me a while to slice it because of the texture. I was wondering if you have any tips for eating liver? I ate mine sliced thin which is the way I eat muscle meats. The morning after I ate the liver I felt like I had a hangover. My eyes were kind of puffy and my muscles ached slightly. Is this normal? I know AV says raw meats can trigger detox symptoms but I'm not so sure I believe this. Have you experienced detox type symptoms eating raw liver, maybe toxins from the liver being released? Or would you assume if you felt sick after eating raw liver that you had been exposed to toxins from the liver itself and that's what made you feel sick? Ok Thanks for your time. Take care
Evan

Answer
Hello again Evan,
I'm afraid Aajonus is right to some extent. When you have been on a raw innards/meat based diet, after years on a cooked-food diet it's natural for the body from time to time to get rid of toxins -while the toxins leave your body they make your body nauseous and weak-after the detox you should feel slightly more full of vitality. My own experience was that I had mild flu-like symptoms every month or so  lasting  2-7 days for the first 2 years.( Mind you I was in an appallingly bad state of health)-but I felt slightly better after each time. On the other hand if you feel nauseous after eating liver every single time, it's likely to just be that your body feels it has no need of the nutrients in liver so that you feel bad. For example, up to last year I used to eat raw ox liver virtually all the time(because it was so cheap)- after 2 years I started finding the raw liver increasingly tasteless(and bowel-loosening!) even though I found it pleasant when I first started the diet. My solution was to eat the liver from different animals such as deer to get different nutrients(Incidentally I eat the liver the same way as you-it's hellish to cut but I usually get the farmer to cut it up a little before putting it in the sealed bag. Try eating bison liver a couple of  times more and if your problems continue it's definitely not because of detox.
I would recommend eating organic (pig/ox?)tongue as an alternative to heart which is easy to cut and tastes great(however the tongue often has some rather tasteless, knotted parts on one side which you will need to cut out.Kidney is really good to eat as well, and is relatively easy to cut, like heart, just avoid the  small white bits in the kidney, they taste foul.If you are feeling adventurous you could try getting hold of bison brain or bone-marrow. I have found they taste great IF they are both fresh.
I do sympathise with your situation to some extent by the way. When I first started the diet I had awful side-effects every time from drinking raw milk or eating raw cheese without any improvement in my health. Aajonus just dismissed these side-effects as mere detox symptoms.My irises were clouding up after I started drinking raw dairy, so I realised (after 25 years!)that I was severely lactose-intolerant to both raw and pasteurised dairy and stuck to a 100% raw palaeolithic non-dairy diet which has served me well. Sure I get occasional genuine detox symptoms but they are nowhere near as bad and I feel fine afterwards.
Anyway, my point is that you should adapt the diet to your body's needs. If you don't like the taste of a particular raw meat/innard, avoid it for a year before tentatively trying it again to see if your tastes have changed, and  just keep on trying out other alternatives allowed by the Primal Diet. Getting hold of bison innards/meat is a brilliant idea as I am sure it has an extremely gamey,pleasant taste but you should also try out other less obvious animal foods to enrich your diet and  avoid dulling your tastebuds; such as raw shellfish(eg:-oysters/mussels-hellish to get the shells open but delicious) and (duck/goose/hen) eggs etc.
Hope This Helps!
Geoff Purcell

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