A Brilliant Brain

"And Abel was a keeper of sheep."

— Genesis 4:2

---

In the ongoing search to understand the metabolic war on Zinc in the modern diet, it is worth remembering that organ meats contain zinc at concentrations that dwarf muscle meat, and the zinc levels in organs might be a better indicator of what the human body was designed to receive than any government RDA derived from a committee that apparently optimized for Zinc deficiency of the public.

The importance of organ meats goes much further than zinc. Organ meats don't just provide one mineral at high concentration. They provide the entire cofactor matrix that the human brain requires for peak function — in the forms, ratios, and biological packaging that the body evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to absorb and utilize.

Your great-grandparents didn't need a supplement stack. They ate the organs. In 2026, you very well do need a supplement stack because you probably don't and because the odds of getting the whole family to sign off on a meal plan involving beef liver on the regular is pretty slim.

---

What Happened to Organ Meats

For the vast majority of human history, organ meats were the prized portion of the animal. Muscle meat — the steaks and chicken breasts that constitute virtually 100% of modern Western meat consumption — was secondary. In many cultures, it was given to the dogs.

The Inuit consumed the organs of seals, caribou, and fish first — liver, kidney, brain, eyes, adrenals — and fed the lean muscle meat to their sled dogs. They were not making a culinary choice. They were making a survival choice. In an environment where plant foods were unavailable for most of the year, organs provided the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals that the body required. The Inuit had no word for scurvy because they got their vitamin C from raw organ meats and muktuk (whale skin).

Traditional Chinese medicine classified liver, kidney, and brain as bu nao — brain-nourishing foods — and prescribed them specifically for cognitive decline, fatigue, and reproductive dysfunction. The principle of "like nourishes like" — eating liver to nourish your liver, eating brain to nourish your brain — was dismissed by Western medicine as folk superstition. The nutrient profiles of these organs suggest the folk tradition was biochemically accurate.

Mediterranean cultures consumed liver, sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas), tripe (stomach), and kidney as regular dietary staples — not as exotic delicacies, but as Tuesday dinner. The same cultures that produced the foundational achievements of Western philosophy, mathematics, engineering, and governance were eating organ meats multiple times per week.

African pastoral cultures — the Maasai, the Fulani, the Nuer — consumed organ meats and blood as primary nutrition sources. Their cognitive and physical performance under conditions of extreme environmental demand was not fueled by grain-based agriculture. It was fueled by the most nutrient-dense foods on earth.

The shift away from organ consumption in the West is recent — largely a post-World War II phenomenon driven by industrialized meat processing (which found organs harder to standardize and market), the rise of supermarket culture (which prioritized visual uniformity), and a cultural aesthetic shift that associated organ meats with poverty rather than vitality.

The generation that stopped eating organs is the same generation that began developing the cognitive and hormonal deficits that this entire blog series has been documenting. This is not a coincidence. It is a cause and effect that hides in plain sight because nobody thinks to look at what disappeared from the plate.

---

The Nutrient Profiles — Why Organs Are the Original Stack

Liver — The Ancestral Multivitamin

Beef liver, per 100 g serving, contains more brain-essential nutrients per calorie than any other single food:

Zinc: ~5 mg — in a heme-bound, highly bioavailable matrix with no phytate inhibitors. A single serving provides nearly half the current (inadequate) RDA.

Vitamin B12: 60-70 mcg — over 1,000% of the RDA. Methylcobalamin-equivalent B12 that feeds directly into the methylation cycle, producing the SAMe required for dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and melatonin synthesis. The same pathway that MitoNRG's methylcobalamin supports — but in a whole-food matrix with co-occurring cofactors that enhance utilization.

Folate: 250-290 mcg — natural folate, not synthetic folic acid. This is the bioavailable form that bypasses the MTHFR polymorphisms affecting 30-40% of the population. The same form as the Quatrefolic® in MitoNRG — but as it occurs in nature.

Vitamin A (retinol): 16,000-26,000 IU — preformed retinol, not beta-carotene. Retinol is directly utilized by the brain for neuronal differentiation, synaptic plasticity, hippocampal function, and the maintenance of the blood-brain barrier. Beta-carotene requires enzymatic conversion to retinol — a process that is inefficient in approximately 45% of the population due to genetic polymorphisms in the BCO1 gene. Liver provides the end product directly.

Choline: 330 mg — more per serving than almost any other food. Choline is the direct precursor for acetylcholine — the neurotransmitter most associated with focused attention, working memory, and learning. It is also a methyl donor that supports the same methylation pathways as folate and B12. A single serving of liver provides more choline than the modest 15mg in MitoNRG — this is one area where food dramatically outperforms the supplement.

Riboflavin (B2): 2.8 mg — the FAD precursor required for mitochondrial electron transport Complex II. Nearly 200% of the RDA in a single serving.

Niacin (B3): 13 mg — the NAD+ precursor for Complex I.

Vitamin B6: 1 mg — the cofactor for both serotonin and dopamine synthesis.

Iron (heme): 6-7 mg — in the heme form that is absorbed at 25-35% efficiency, compared to 2-10% for the non-heme iron in plant foods and fortified grains. Heme iron does not compete with zinc for absorption via DMT1 the way non-heme iron does — a critical distinction that the fortification policy we discussed in the previous post ignores entirely.

Copper: 9-12 mg — which balances zinc in the copper-zinc SOD (superoxide dismutase) system, one of the body's primary endogenous antioxidant mechanisms. This is the mineral pairing that supplementation protocols must carefully manage — and that liver provides in naturally balanced ratios.

Selenium: 36 mcg — the cofactor for glutathione peroxidase, the enzyme that makes glutathione functional. Also required for T4-to-T3 thyroid hormone conversion.

One food. The complete B-vitamin complex. The methylation cofactors. The neurotransmitter precursors. The antioxidant minerals. The mitochondrial cofactors. All in a bioavailable, whole-food matrix with naturally balanced ratios.

Heart — The Mitochondrial Meat

Beef heart is the richest dietary source of Coenzyme Q10 — the electron transport chain carrier that we identified as the primary gap in the supplement stack. Heart tissue is essentially concentrated mitochondria — it is the organ that never stops working, beating 100,000 times per day, and its nutrient profile reflects the mitochondrial density required for continuous ATP production.

Per 100g serving, beef heart provides:

CoQ10: 11-13 mg — more than any other food. For comparison, sardines provide about 6mg, and pork about 3mg. Supplemental CoQ10 (ubiquinol) at 100-200 mg is still more per dose, but dietary CoQ10 from heart arrives in the mitochondrial membrane matrix of the food itself — a delivery mechanism that supplementation approximates but cannot fully replicate.

B-vitamins: Substantial B12, B6, riboflavin, and niacin — the same electron transport chain cofactors as liver, reinforcing the mitochondrial support profile.

Zinc: ~2mg per 100 g — less than liver but still significant, and in the same high-bioavailability matrix.

Iron (heme): 4-5 mg — again in the efficiently absorbed heme form.

Selenium, phosphorus, and amino acids including high concentrations of taurine — which supports cardiac and neural function, acts as an inhibitory neuromodulator (similar to glycine), and supports mitochondrial membrane stability.

Heart is essentially the food-form equivalent of the MitoNRG formula — mitochondrial cofactors in a biological matrix. A person who eats beef heart regularly is providing their mitochondria with the same support compounds that the supplement delivers, plus CoQ10 in the most bioavailable form available.

Kidney — The Detoxification Organ

Beef kidney is exceptionally rich in B12 and selenium — the two cofactors most critical for methylation and glutathione function, respectively. It also provides:

DAO (diamine oxidase) — the enzyme that degrades histamine. For individuals with histamine intolerance (a surprisingly common and underdiagnosed condition that manifests as headaches, anxiety, insomnia, and brain fog), dietary DAO from kidney can directly supplement the enzymatic capacity their body lacks.

Zinc, iron, and B-vitamins in the same bioavailable matrix as other organs.

Kidney was consumed regularly in British and European cuisine through the mid-20th century (steak and kidney pie was a dietary staple, not an oddity) and was gradually displaced by the same supermarket standardization that eliminated all organ consumption.

Brain — The Forbidden Superfood

Animal brain tissue contains the highest concentration of DHA (omega-3) of any food — dramatically more per gram than fish. It also provides:

Phosphatidylserine — the membrane phospholipid that supports neuronal membrane integrity, has documented cognitive benefits, and is one of the targeted additions we recommended for APOE-4 carriers.

Phosphatidylcholine — another membrane phospholipid and choline source that supports both structural membrane maintenance and acetylcholine synthesis.

Cholesterol — in the form that neuronal membranes are built from. Brain-derived cholesterol is structurally identical to the cholesterol the human brain synthesizes locally for synapse formation, myelin maintenance, and receptor function — the very cholesterol that statins impair.

Traditional cultures fed brain to pregnant women and young children — the populations with the highest neurological development demands. This practice was universal across cultures that had access to animal brain tissue.

The removal of brain from the Western diet — driven primarily by BSE (mad cow disease) concerns beginning in the 1990s — eliminated the single best dietary source of DHA, phosphatidylserine, and brain-specific cholesterol. Whether the BSE risk justified the complete elimination of brain consumption from the dietary repertoire, rather than sourcing from BSE-free herds, is a question worth asking.

Oysters — The Zinc Champion

Oysters are technically an organ — when you eat an oyster, you eat the entire animal, including all of its organs. Per 100 g:

Zinc: 74 mg — more than any other food by an enormous margin. A single serving of six medium oysters provides approximately 32mg of zinc — nearly three times the current RDA and approximately what Prasad's research suggests is the functional daily requirement for a man accounting for seminal loss.

B12: 16 mcg. Selenium: 77 mcg. Iron: 7mg. Copper: 4.5mg. Omega-3s: 672 mg.

Oysters are the food that most clearly reveals the absurdity of the modern zinc situation. A culture that consumed oysters even once a week would not have a zinc deficiency problem. The fact that oysters have gone from a working-class staple (in the 19th century, they were the cheapest protein available in coastal cities) to a luxury item consumed primarily by the affluent is its own commentary on how dietary access to zinc has been stratified by economics.

---

The Ancestral Pattern — Like Nourishes Like

The traditional medicine principle — eat liver to support your liver, eat heart to support your heart, eat brain to support your brain — was derided by modern medicine as sympathetic magic. The nutrient profiles suggest it was empirical observation encoded as heuristic.

Liver is the body's metabolic processing center. Its nutrient profile — B-vitamins, methylation cofactors, retinol, choline — supports the metabolic processing that every organ requires.

Heart is the body's engine. Its nutrient profile — CoQ10, taurine, B-vitamins, heme iron — supports the mitochondrial energy production that every cell requires.

Brain is the body's neural network. Its nutrient profile — DHA, phosphatidylserine, phosphatidylcholine, cholesterol — supports the membrane integrity and synaptic function that neuronal tissue requires.

Kidney is the body's filter. Its nutrient profile — selenium, B12, DAO — supports the detoxification and clearance functions that systemic health requires.

The ancients didn't have mass spectrometry. They had millennia of observation. And their observation produced the same conclusion that modern nutrient analysis confirms: the organs provide what the corresponding human systems need, in the forms those systems evolved to use.

---

The Modern Practical Protocol

For someone building the cognitive optimization stack, organ meats represent the whole-food foundation that the supplement protocol is designed to approximate.

The Minimum Effective Organ Protocol

Beef liver: 100-200 g per week (2-3 servings). This provides the bulk of the B-vitamin, retinol, choline, zinc, copper, and iron that the brain requires. If the taste is objectionable, liver can be frozen and grated into ground beef, chili, bolognese, or meatballs where its flavor is masked by other ingredients.

Beef heart: 100-150 g per week (1-2 servings). Ground heart is virtually indistinguishable from ground beef in texture and flavor. It can be mixed 50/50 with ground beef for burgers, meatloaf, or tacos. This provides the CoQ10 and additional mitochondrial support that the supplement stack addresses with ubiquinol.

Oysters: 6-12 per week (1-2 servings). Fresh, canned, or smoked. This alone addresses the zinc requirement more comprehensively than any supplement can, in the most bioavailable form nature provides.

What Organs Provide That Supplements Cannot

Whole-food matrix: Nutrients in organ meats arrive in the biological context they evolved alongside — bound to proteins, embedded in lipid membranes, accompanied by co-occurring cofactors that enhance absorption and utilization. This matrix effect is real and difficult to replicate with isolated compounds.

Naturally balanced ratios: The zinc-to-copper ratio in liver is approximately 1:2 — close to the ratio the human body maintains. Supplemental zinc without corresponding copper can create copper deficiency over time. Liver provides both in natural proportion.

Choline at meaningful doses: The 330mg of choline in a single liver serving far exceeds what most supplements provide. For acetylcholine-dependent cognitive function — focus, memory, learning — this is significant.

CoQ10 in its native matrix: Heart provides CoQ10 embedded in mitochondrial membrane tissue — the biological delivery system the molecule was designed for.

What Supplements Still Provide That Organs Cannot

Magnesium — not meaningfully concentrated in any organ meat. Tri-form magnesium (threonate, glycinate, malate) remains essential regardless of organ consumption.

Therapeutic-dose omega-3s — unless consuming brain tissue (which most people won't), dietary omega-3 from organs alone is insufficient for the 2-3 g EPA/DHA that the research supports for neuroinflammation resolution and APOE-4 management.

Creatine at 5-10 g — organ meats contain creatine (liver and heart especially), but at 1-2g per serving — insufficient for the phosphocreatine saturation that the cognitive research demonstrates at 5-10g daily.

Boron — not present in animal foods at meaningful levels. Supplemental boron citrate remains necessary for fluoride clearance and hormonal optimization.

Standardized neuroprotective compounds — EGCG, sulforaphane precursors, trans-resveratrol, and alpha lipoic acid at therapeutic doses are not available from organ meats. MitoNRG provides these in standardized, verified concentrations.

Consistent dosing — organ nutrient content varies with the animal's diet, breed, age, and environment. Supplements provide consistent, verified doses. The combination of whole-food organ consumption with targeted supplementation for the gaps produces the most comprehensive coverage.

---

The Integrated Approach — Organs + Stack

The optimal protocol is not organs OR supplements. It is organs AND supplements, each covering what the other cannot.

Organs provide: The complete B-vitamin complex, retinol, choline, heme iron, copper, zinc (especially from oysters), CoQ10 (from heart), and the whole-food matrix that enhances absorption of all of the above.

Supplements provide: Magnesium (Brain Boost), therapeutic omega-3s (Omega Minis), creatine at cognitive doses, boron, and the standardized neuroprotective compounds (MitoNRG) that are not available from animal foods.

The smoothie provides: The plant-based polyphenols (blueberry anthocyanins), the nitric oxide substrate (spinach nitrate), the glycine (collagen), and the creatine delivery system (with insulin co-stimulus from honey and protein).

Together, this represents the complete substrate — ancestral whole-food nutrition, modern mineral repletion, and targeted neuroprotective supplementation. It is the Philosopher's Stone protocol in its fullest expression: the ancient and the modern, the whole food and the isolated compound, the wisdom of traditional cultures and the precision of modern biochemistry.

Your great-grandparents got most of this from their diet because they ate the organs, drank mineral-rich water, grew food in mineral-rich soil, and didn't have a government committee telling them that 11mg of zinc was sufficient for a man who apparently never ejaculates.

You live in a different world. The organs are still available — at the butcher counter, at the farmers' market, even in freeze-dried capsule form for those who truly cannot tolerate the taste. The supplements cover what the organs cannot. And the knowledge of why both matter is what this series has been building toward from the first post.

Eat the organs. Take the stack. Build the brain.

The ancestors knew. The science confirms. Go run the experiment and share your findings with the world -- for the Zinc-depleted masses plagued with brain fog, it should not take long for some to report cognitive progress.

---

The organ meat protocol provides the ancestral foundation. Brain Boost provides the magnesium that organs cannot. Omega Minis provide therapeutic EPA/DHA beyond what diet alone delivers. MitoNRG provides the standardized neuroprotective compounds — NAC, ALCAR, ALA, EGCG, sulforaphane, and resveratrol — that complete the stack. Together with organ meats, the smoothie, creatine, zinc, and boron, it is the full Philosopher's Stone protocol: ancient wisdom and modern precision, working in concert. Explore the full line at Naturologie →