Organ Meat Is All the Rage Thanks to MAHA and the Natural Food Fad

When Rob McDaniel makes smoothies for his four kids, he tosses in berries, some wildflower honey and an ounce or two of raw beef liver. “They think that’s what smoothies taste like,” says McDaniel, a physician’s assistant and the chief executive officer of Primal Pastures, which bills itself as the “cleanest meat in America” and sells direct-to-consumer chicken gizzards and beef hearts. “They love them.”

McDaniel’s business is just one of many offering organ meat to the masses, capitalizing on a cultural moment by way of some savvy branding—and blending. By recasting offal (that is, edible animal innards) as “primal” and “ancestral,” companies have been able to appeal to the burgeoning Make America Healthy Again crowd and its penchant for so-called natural food. The rebranding has also helped the less zealous get comfortable with a bit of kidney in their burgers, as has a modern approach that relies on mixing offal with other meats. A selling point of blends containing 80% ground beef, 10% beef liver and 10% beef heart is that you won’t even taste the organs.