Heart & Soil - Beef Organs

What it is

Beef Organs is a whole-food supplement: freeze-dried grass-fed, grass-finished bovine liver, heart, kidney, pancreas and spleen, in a gelatin capsule. Each capsule is 500 mg. A bottle holds 180, and the full daily serving is six — roughly three grams of dried organ, about a month per bottle. The company lists it at $52 a bottle, less on subscription. Heart & Soil was founded by Paul Saladino, MD, and states that every batch is tested by Informed Sport, a third-party banned-substance certification.

The honest description: dried organ meat, ground and encapsulated. It is not a formulated multivitamin with stated microgram amounts of anything. Like all supplements, it is not FDA-evaluated, and the label says it is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Why it's on this list

The case for organ meat is a case about food, not about pills. Liver is one of the densest natural sources of preformed vitamin A, B12, copper, heme iron and riboflavin. Heart carries CoQ10, taurine and carnitine. Americans ate these organs routinely a century ago and stopped. Nose-to-tail is not a wellness trend; it's what respect for an animal used to mean.

A capsule solves a practical problem: most people will not buy liver, cook it, and eat it twice. If you're one of them, this is organ meat without the taste.

Be clear about the evidence. What is well established is the nutrient content of the organs themselves. What is thin is clinical research on encapsulated organ powders. Anyone promising energy or transformation from a capsule is selling, not reporting. Talk to a doctor before starting any supplement.

What to know before you buy

• The full serving is six capsules a day. One bottle a month, roughly $1.73 a day at the single-bottle price. The company suggests starting at one capsule and building up.
• Preformed vitamin A adds up. Liver is loaded with retinol, which accumulates in a way beta-carotene does not. If you take a multivitamin, cod liver oil or a retinoid, don't stack them blindly. Ask a doctor.
• Pregnancy is a real caution. Excess preformed vitamin A in early pregnancy carries a risk of birth defects, and public health guidance in several countries advises pregnant women to avoid liver and vitamin A supplements. If you are pregnant or planning to be, don't take this without your doctor's direction.
• Iron and copper matter for some people. Hemochromatosis, elevated ferritin or Wilson's disease make added heme iron and copper a doctor's conversation.
• Real liver is cheaper and stronger. A half pound from a butcher costs a few dollars and delivers far more than three grams of powder. If you'll cook it, cook it. Buy capsules only because you won't.