Safe amount of liver

(M) #1

can I eat .5 - 1 oz bison liver daily without worrying of overdose of vitamin a?

(Robin) #2

This is needless minutia and a distraction from the simple keto diet.
Sorry that sounds harsh… but you’re making it overly complicated.

Try to stop sweating the small stuff.
Again, stay under 20g of carbs and call it good.

(M) #3

I don’t think it’s small stuff. Perhaps there is a better place to post it?

I am not normal weight, and I have read excess vitamin A can cause depression and problems. I am currently eating it for b12. I need at least 15mg b12 per day to keep my levels up due to poor absorption. I need it from a source that does not have mercury.

#4

I am not sure why you chose Keto when you need to gain weight as fast as possible to have your surgery. I would eat a bunch of ice cream or something if I needed to put on weight fast.

(Bob) #5

Yes, that should be a safe amount of liver to consume each day as long as your not taking any supplements that also contain vitamin A.

#6

I eat significantly more liver since years, I won’t stop (it’s the lowest amount I comfortably can so it’s easy for me :smiley: but I am a hedonist trusting my body, I just don’t worry about food).
It’s mostly chicken and pork though, IDK if bison is different but probably not by much… Sounds a safe amount. 500g chicken/pork liver is for 14 days I have read…? And it disappears in 1-2 days (once I inhaled 400g in minutes, it’s not a big amount of food, after all) and I need to wait almost forever for the next dose… I do my best but I can’t do that so perfectly :smiley: And it’s without all the pâté I buy… Well not anymore, the ingredients list isn’t good enough for me.

Sorry, of course you are very different from me (especially regarding worrying about your food, you even may have more reasons, I have good genetics and my body tells me if I do something wrong) but according to what I have read, your amounts should be fine, I even quickly googled bison liver. 1 oz isn’t much (well of course not, it’s barely visible on the plate… but thinking of polar bear liver, one can’t never know if something is more extreme than other similar items).

(Mike W.) #7

It’s incredibly hard to get too much of any vitamin when it’s from food. Your body is smart and will dump excess. You run into issues when you over supplement.

#8

It’s way easier with fat soluble vitamins like Vitamin A. No, the body doesn’t just throw it out, that’s for water soluble ones. Hard to overdose Vitamin C from food (probably plain impossible, even people supplementing it like crazy normally don’t have problems), it’s pretty known :smiley: But A, D, E, K are different and it’s very easy to eat several times more Vitamin A than needed, at least for some of us and if what I have read is close to the truth, 3 times more than the RDA is the upper limit if we want to be safe… It’s not hard to eat more just from liver if one likes it (and find the price tempting too… so easy and cheap and it adds variety and it’s tender and lovely…).

(And don’t forget polar bear liver :upside_down_face: It’s not a danger for us but I still can’t be calm about it, it’s CRAZY… You jump it once, you die from Vitamin A overdose, it’s that level. I really should stop mentioning it all the time…)

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

That is very true for the water-soluble vitamins. Fat-soluble vitamins, on the other hand, tend to accumulate and cause problems. Vitamin A, which is the concern here, is fat-soluble.

You are right, however, that it is very difficult to overdo even the fat-soluble vitamins from diet alone. Bear’s liver might contain toxic levels of vitamin A, but given how much other meat is on a bear, are you really going to eat the entire liver in one go? Not likely.

ETA: As Michael Pollan points out, one of the big things wrong with our current attitude to food is looking at it as nutrients. That causes our eating behaviour to get out of balance. He strongly advises eating food, and letting the nutrients take care of themselves.

(Brian) #10

I think there is something to that.

I also think that when someone does that, their tastes may also nudge them in a direction their bodies may be lacking in something. “Craving” something, mabye. Kinda like salt, when you need it, you’ll want it but when you don’t need it, it won’t taste so good.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #11

Bingo! :+1:

#12

Nope but one may eat a pound of pork/chicken/beef liver each and every day (it’s not even a big amount but probably few people would like to eat more than that. even I wouldn’t want this much but could eat, probably) and that is a lot of Vitamin A, it adds up slowly but surely, doesn’t it? Even way less than this is over the allegedly safe amount.

It sounds good to me. I am sure some people would mess up things like that but it works for way more people… I had times when I looked at this and that but it hardly could control my eating decisions… I just ate whatever I liked and considered okay (they never were too far away) and I can’t possibly know how I would feel on some Ideal Diet but I always was pretty healthy and felt okay… (It could be better, I could use more energy but I probably am not one who will ever get it. That thing is individual too.)

I definitely see this in my body but I see people eating in horrible ways, they surely wouldn’t get the nudges I do… Not like I couldn’t eat somewhat wrong in my past but I always got plenty of nutrients my body wanted…
It works even way better without plant carbs :slight_smile: I eat my lean meat and start to desire fat… :slight_smile: I don’t eat enough protein for some weird reason and I get hungry for more… It works well as long as I avoid overeating but I know what triggers that now.

Salt always taste exactly the same to me. It’s salty. It’s never gross but salty water always is so I never ever will drink that :slight_smile: Not like I need it ever so it’s all good.
I had salt aversion once but I did carnivore based on heavily salted smoked pork as meat at that time… Not a normal situation.
I automatically eat the perfect amount of sodium under normal circumstances as far as I can tell so my experiences are tiny. Salt is always something that I don’t crave but don’t have an aversion either. It’s just salty.
My tastebuds are stubborn. I may desire something like crazy but the taste of it is a different thing. Tasty food can taste irresistible even if I don’t need it and I am way too full already. It’s probably lucky if one has their urges correlated but mines just run into very different directions.