Why Organ Meats Not Only Cause Gout
This week I’ll tackle the subject of organ meats that causes much confusion but if you use common sense, you’ll logically agree with my brief thesis. Consuming organ meats is very popular around the world but more popular outside of the United States mainly in Asia. Organ meats can include liver, kidneys, heart, brains, tongue, tripe and many other parts of an animal.
You’ll find on the internet and media many doctors, health professionals, dieticians claiming that organ meats are so healthy for you; rich in vitamins and minerals, bla bla bla bla…it’s actually shocking to see some of the biggest names providing health and nutritional advice talk this nonsense. They state that organ meats are healthy because they are exceedingly nutrient dense.
The truth of the matter is that their advice is well intentioned since they are confused about the facts but equally foolish. Yes organ meats are rich in multi-vitamins but would you take a pill that is full of toxins and includes multi-vitamins? No you wouldn’t because no amount of nutrition can compensate for the problems generated later on. Gout being one of them. I guess if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the Truth!
The toxicity of organ meats
Let me ask you would you eat the contents of a mop? Yes the mop you mop your floor with? Would you eat the filter out of your car? The liver of an animal is the mop and/or filter of its body. Organ meats like the liver and kidneys are full of toxins filtered out of the blood stream. What you find in the liver is toxic chemicals like mercury, lead, PCBs, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, ddt, selenium and the list goes and on!
The main job of the liver is to safely remove toxins or to store them if removal is not possible. Eating liver for example is like eating all of the toxins that an animal was unable to expel throughout its entire lifetime and you know how many toxic chemicals are found in farms nowadays like antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, processed feeds and vaccine ingredients! And who cares if the liver is organic or not, I still don’t recommend you don’t eat it because it still carries toxins!
Then you got others who say to eat organ meats raw intact with the raw blood which is a concentrate and hazardous to your health! This will cause you a parasitic infection and/or a toxocariasis infection. Like to eat brains? Did you know that eating 5 ounces of pork brains will provide you with about 2000 mg of the bad kind cholesterol? Nowadays it’s considered very fashionable and the “in thing” to eat pate or liverwurst at fancy restaurants.
If you follow the Paleo Diet, a diet high in meat consumption which does include organ meats, please stop it immediately. It is a diet based on artery-clogging saturated fats and cholesterol that can also damage your bones and may raise uric acid levels in your blood. Remember the longest living populations on the planet today (Okinawa, Japan/Ikaria, Greece/Sardinia, Italy to name a few) live on low-animal food diets consisting mostly of complex carbohydrates rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Low carbohydrate diets rich in protein are stirring up the destruction of human health.
For us gout sufferers, we all know that organ meats is one of the biggest culprits in developing the disease and eating organ meats may trigger a gout attack. Not only are they high in purines but when the body breaks down the purine, it develops uric acid as a by-product which then accumulates in the bloodstream and the kidneys cannot easily remove. Eating organ meats will cause urate crystals to form around the joints which may lead to symptoms of gout. My advice. Avoid organ meats like the plague!
23 replies to "Gout and Organ Meats"
[…] The only difference between the two is how they affect the body. Purines found in certain meats, organ meats, and seafood are the top suspected culprits for gout attacks and avoiding these food items can […]
[…] Should you avoid organ meats if you have gout? […]
Hello Spiro,
Thank you for that article. Do you still have the references you used to write this article ? I can’t see them around the post but maybe I don’t find them…
Thank you very much !
Wow…this is really bad science. Please lookup how liver works. Liver is not a filter that holds all the bad stuff forever – it just separates it so it can be evacuated by the kidney. Sometimes not all toxins/metals are eliminated – some will be stored. The liver is not an independent entity in the animal body. If the liver has heavy metal residue so does lean meat (from the same animal).
Organs are indeed an important component of a healthy diet. Read Kate Shanahan’s work. She is the doctor for LA lakers. Also why do you think the pack leader in the animal world eats the organs from the prey and leaves the meat for the weaker members?
As for the cholesterol causative link to CVD…..Ancel Keys has been proven a fraud for a long time already.
Fix the inflammation. Cholesterol will go down. Fighthing cholesterol is like pulling firefighters off the ladder. You don’t see them – means no fire?????
God, this post is embarrassingly bad! Full of misinformation and just outright lies. The reason the Paleo movement and ketogenic diets have become popular is in light of new science. Your parroting the same thing they said back in the 1900’s; that saturated fats are “artery clogging”. You know, the same people who benefited from the “healthy substitutes,” “low-fat” movement that we have to thank for trans fats and highly inflammatory vegetable oils. We now know the science was fraudulent and deliberately deceptive. Humans have eaten meat since the beginning of time yet only in the past 100 years has chronic disease escalated to unprecedented numbers. People’s saturated fat intake has drastically reduced since the 1900’s yet disease continues to spiral. Please, please look into relevant up to date science! This “advice” is so harmful.
Hi Vina!
There are way more studies that prove that high fat diets lowers life expectancy than studies claiming that paleo and ketogenic diet are the way to go for living a long and healthy life.
All you have to do is look at the blue zones where life expectancy is the highest and look at their diets and how it comprises mostly of complex carbohydrates “food as grown from the earth”! In areas of the world where you have high meat intake diets, the life expectancy drops dramatically. I can agree that the ketogenic diet can help certain people with epilepsy for example or other rare conditions but it is not a diet that the majority of people should follow.
If gout sufferers follow that advice of eating more meat so they can improve their gout, we’d all be in serious trouble.
I’m not going to take sides here but there are over 3,000 peer-reviewed articles indexed on PubMed EVERY DAY. Your assertion of “There are way more studies that prove that high fat diets lowers life expectancy…” is, at best an unverifiable assertion you pulled out of thin air, at worst, an outright lie. Humans are incredibly adaptable creatures and have thrived in all kinds of environments. You can find long life expectancy in different environments, and picking variables at random (high vs low animals, high vs low fiber, high vs low carbohydrates) represents researcher (and blogger) bias more than anything else.
Hi George!
Forget the studies for one minute. Let’s use common sense instead. Look at the blue zones where pockets of population have the longest life expectancy and live disease free. Their diets consist mostly of complex carbohydrates (foods as grown from the earth). Very little protein in meat and fish and some good fats, mostly olive oil and some dairy along with nuts. I am fed up of all this confusion that the diet industry thrives on in order to stay relevant. It always needs to feed us new “supposed” scientific data that says this and that. Read my posts on the Tsimane tribes, 7th Day Adventists, Tom Brady etc… you’ll get a good sense of what I am talking about.
Can you recommend foods to prevent gout but also will not affect my blood sugar as I’m diabetic?
Does ostrich meat cause gout?
Warm Regards
Hi Eric!
Any meat will worsen your gout cause meat raises uric acid in the blood.
Check out my site, there is plenty of dietary information on what foods to eat.
Hi Spiro!
First thanks for maintaining a gout website. Any gout references are a good thing, however I think you may want to reevaluate some of your dietary advice.
A ketogenic diet is not a high protein diet. I have been on uloric probably since it came out. I think around 2011? My uric acid level has always hovered around 7.5 on my high grain with added veggies, medium protein diet in the past. I decided to get serious about my health this summer and drop the grains and sugar from my diet, up my fats, keep protein moderate and go keto. Last week my uric acid level was checked and it was down to 6.6. I dropped about 30 lb (from 275 to about 244 zi am 6′) I think my protein intake had even increased a bit too from my previous diet…but still moderate! You may want to do some more research into keto…not high protein Atkins, but keto keeping protein moderate. I am very happy with my results and am thinking of trying to wean off of uloric if my results continue as they are.
Correlation is not causation.
Every doctor I’ve ever met has warned me about organ meat. They all agree lean muscle meat is best at proper serving sizes. They include heart and tongue scince these are muscles and not filters. Also not to be eaten raw or med rare but well done with juices dripping away from the meat.
Hi, Spiro – I thought you might be interested in this.
Today the Consumerist blog had a story about beef heart meat now being allowed in ground beef.
https://consumerist.com/2017/02/02/thanks-to-policy-change-your-ground-beef-may-include-more-heart-than-you-think/
I know we’re supposed to be limiting beef, and eliminating organ meats such as heart. According to this news story, ground beef can now be up to 25% heart, without it even being mentioned on the food label–so gout sufferers have no way of telling whether it’s there or not.
I went to the Dept. of Agriculture page referenced in the article, and clicked on Ask a Question to let them know that this policy could affect gout patients. Maybe some of your other readers will want to do the same.
[…] Should You Avoid Organ Meats if You Have Gout? […]
The idea that saturated fat clogs arteries is a myth. Also dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on your cholesterol levels. The same with purines. The level of uric acid in your body is 2/3 effected by YOUR BODY. How much purines you eat has little effect.
Hi Roman!
As for the cholesterol argument you make, the scientific evidence proves this argument, please stop reading and listening to these Paleo-fad types who are simply whitewashing the truth for their own personal gain. Studies I’ve posted on this website have proven that diet plays an important role in keeping uric acid levels healthy.
I agree. We eat too much animal food sources. Fish and milk products I eat a lot. I also eat a little bit of shellfish,roe and eggs but I do not want too much cholesterol and also I do not want to promote gout too much. Traditional European overclass diet promotes gout, heart problems and a lot of other diseases.
[…] diet as outlined on this website and my eBook by limiting red meats, poultry and other meats. Avoid organ meats and seafood entirely. You want to avoid excessive protein intake since it will worsen your gout. […]
[…] Organ Meats like liver, brains, cow tongue, heart, eyeballs, kidney expect not only a gout attack after an organ meat dinner but watch out for your cholesterol too! […]
[…] Brains, Kidneys, Liver, Animal hearts (my advice is not too even touch organ meats) […]
[…] Discover if organ meats are healthy for you […]
[…] choline, also known as lecithin. This is a nutrient found mostly in red meat, chicken, shellfish, organ meats, eggs and milk which all basically come from animal and/or animal products. What they also found […]