Latest news with #WholeFoods'
Buzz Feed
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Whole Foods Berry Chantilly Latte: Taste Test & Review
Strawberries for spring? Groundbreaking. Whole Foods isn't reinventing the wheel by introducing their new Berry Chantilly Latte to customers this spring, inspired by their Berry Chantilly Cake, the Whole Foods Bakery darling of many a birthday and graduation celebration across the country. Whole Foods announced that the latte would only be available for a limited time through July 1. But what they are doing is building upon the success of a customer favorite: vanilla cake layers scented with almond extract and filled with fresh mixed berries and mascarpone frosting. Not too sweet, and perfect for a spring gathering. The latte satisfies in the same way…that is, if you can find it. I first tried a slice of the Berry Chantilly Cake this past September when news outlets reported Whole Foods' decision to change the beloved recipe of the cake due to standardization across storefronts, sparking nationwide outrage over the alteration of the instant classic. Much to the pleasure of many, they quickly reversed their decision. The cake is light and a crowd pleaser in the simplest sense. Its iconic fresh berry and almond flavor has been introduced in latte form, and customers have a lot to say. 'It's so good…I don't think it's too sweet, and I still get a good, strong coffee flavor,' says TikTok user Anna Fenstermacher. Others were not as impressed by the beverage, with Delish's Megan Schaltegger saying that it doesn't do the cake justice. Either way, I donned my raincoat and set out into the rain to hunt down the viral refreshment. I arrived at my local Whole Foods in Brooklyn and located the espresso bar, hidden away on the second floor of the store. Truthfully, I didn't even know it was there. Descending the staircase towards the entrance of the store, I found communal tables, where groups of folks were enjoying sushi with friends or typing away on laptops, a cup of soup steaming next to their keyboards. Much to my disappointment, the coffee bar was closed. An employee nearby told me that the coffee bar doesn't have a set schedule…it's just open when it's open. My first obstacle in my search for the Berry Chantilly Latte, but I wasn't going to let it get me down. I made my way downstairs and made some phone calls in the parking lot. One Whole Foods in Fort Greene didn't have a coffee bar. Another on Wall Street had one, but their team member didn't show up for their shift. The optics weren't looking good. I made a phone call to the Whole Foods in Tribeca and asked to speak to the barista himself. He answered the phone chipperly. 'Please…Are you open, did you show up for your shift, and do you have the Berry Chantilly Latte?' After a cautious pause, he confirmed yes on all fronts. It was a go. I arrived at the coffee bar and placed my order, informing them that this was the fourth Whole Foods I had attempted to find the latte at. 'Seriously? We just introduced it last week…' he replied. A combination of poor logistics and virality is funny that way, I suppose. After searching high and low and shelling out $4.75, I was happy to discover that the latte is very good. It's very sweet, if you're into that. My coffee order leans toward a cortado with milk and no sugar, so this was out of my comfort zone. But even so, it's hard to hate something so candied and cool. Taking my first sip, I was first hit with the strong aroma of fresh strawberry, as if macerated and spooned atop soft shortcake. The sweet, vanilla-scented berry mellows out into mild cream, giving way to the nutty taste of almond and bitter espresso at the finish. That's what I appreciate most about the latte: it actually tastes like coffee. If I wanted a strawberry milkshake, I'd go anywhere else, but for my afternoon coffee fix with a little kiss of sweetness, this fits the bill very nicely. It's worth the trip, and if I were you, I'd call your barista ahead of time. Have you managed to get your hands on the elusive Berry Chantilly Latte? Let me know all your thoughts in the comments. And if you're looking to get your caffeine fix without the hassle, download the Tasty app to browse all of our favorite coffee recipes — no subscription required.
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Amazon.com is sued over alleged sale of contaminated rice
HighlightsConsumers have filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Amazon over the sale of 18 types of rice contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals, including products from Ben's Original and Whole Foods' 365 brand. The lawsuit follows a study by Healthy Babies, Bright Futures that revealed arsenic in all tested rice samples, with 28% exceeding U.S. Food and Drug Administration limits for infant rice cereal, raising concerns about the health risks to children. Plaintiffs in the case claim they would not have purchased contaminated rice products if they had been aware of the dangers, seeking unspecified damages of at least $5 million for violations of Washington state consumer protection laws. By Jonathan Stempel - was sued on Friday by consumers over its alleged sale of a wide variety of rice contaminated by arsenic and other "heavy metals." The proposed class action in Seattle federal court covers 18 types of rice sold through Amazon, including from familiar brands such as Ben's Original and Amazon-owned Whole Foods' 365. "Amazon sold these rice products with alarmingly high levels of heavy metals to an intended consumer audience that includes children, with no warning whatsoever about the dangers of heavy metals," the complaint said. The lawsuit followed a study last week by Healthy Babies, Bright Futures, a nonprofit that focuses on babies' exposure to toxic chemicals. That study found arsenic in all 145 rice samples purchased nationwide, with 28% exceeding a U.S. Food and Drug Administration limit for infant rice cereal. It also found cadmium in all but one sample, and lead and mercury in more than one-third of tested samples. Amazon, based in Seattle, had no immediate comment. Exposure to heavy metals has been associated with negative health effects such as nervous system problems, immune system suppression and kidney damage, and autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in young children. The 18 rice products include two from Ben's Original and three with the 365 label. Plaintiffs Ashley Wright and Merriman Blum said they would not have bought or would have paid less for Iberia Basmati 100% Aged Original rice, one of the products, if they knew the rice was contaminated or Amazon never tested it for heavy metals. Friday's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages of at least $5 million for Amazon's alleged violations of Washington state consumer protection laws. Makers of baby food and dark chocolate have also faced many consumer lawsuits over the alleged presence of heavy metals. The case is Wright et al v Inc, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington, No. 25-00977.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
These 11 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets About Whole Foods Are Upsetting
When it first opened in 1980, Whole Foods was a grocery chain like no other, prioritizing natural foods, stringent quality standards, and sustainable growing practices. The chain and its products made with good-for-you ingredients has evolved into stores that attract a more health-conscious clientele. Consequently, its supply chain often demands a higher price, which has deterred many from making it a regular stop. Since Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, however, prices are not the only thing that's changed. The retailer continues to rely on its reputation as a wholesome, organic, sustainable grocery stop, but piggy-backing off fast-paced Amazon warehouse protocols and centralized operations has begun to change the spirit of the store. Unfortunately, as Whole Foods becomes more accessible to a wider customer base via Prime deliveries and lowered prices, its original principles of wholesome, sustainable food are falling to the wayside. It has put more pressure on employees and begun to worry the small farmers who were formerly a large part of the store's supply chain. Furthermore, many of Whole Foods' original principles, such as providing local and natural foods, no longer hold weight as they transform into marketing ploys rather than core values. In addition to these broad strokes changes, the chain has been misleading customers on many fronts since well before Amazon took over. From mislabelling to overpricing, here are 11 upsetting behind-the-scenes secrets which have revealed that Whole Foods isn't entirely as wholesome as its marketing would suggest. Read more: 7 Of The Best Aldi Food Deals That Put Costco To Shame Whole Foods originally emphasized locally sourced products, which allowed for regional differences from store to store. The most clear, standardized definition of "local" comes from Congresses' 2008 Farm Bill, which states that the total distance a product is transported is "less than 400 miles from the origin of the product; or the State in which the product is produced." This distinction is interpreted loosely, and "local" often does not have a rigid significance. Sometimes it may simply refer to where a brand has its headquarters, which could be nearby, but may have absolutely no relation to where its products come from. According to the former Whole Foods Global Executive Grocery Coordinator in an interview with the Guardian, the idea of local products "used to be about climate change and developing strong supply chains and regional food systems. Now it's essentially a marketing gimmick." Whole Foods no longer prioritizes buying local, and it had been moving towards centralized purchasing since well before Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos bought it. While Amazon seeks to lower overall grocery prices across all locations to make things more accessible to a wider consumer base, this centralization means controlling inventory through a single database run through its Austin headquarters. Centralization not only delocalizes products, but incentivizes the purchasing of non-local products available at a lower price. In fact, there are concerns that Whole Foods intentionally inflates the price of the locally sourced products that it carries. This has many small farmers and suppliers worried that they will soon be unable to compete. After building up a reputation of promoting and prioritizing organic, local produce after decades in business, Whole Foods has started abusing consumer trust in its standards, to the further detriment of local farmers. This is particularly in regards to the store's self-imposed rating system, called Responsibly Grown, which lists produce under the headings of "good, better, or best." This system runs completely independent of the rigorous industry protocols and expensive certifications required for growers and produce to be officially defined as organic. Under Whole Foods' somewhat arbitrary system, non-organic farmers can receive the same status as organic farmers if they employ other sustainability measures in their business operations. When referred to as "responsibly grown" and offered at a more tantalizing price point, these products appeal to many of the consumers who would have opted for organic, and who trust that Whole Foods would have their best interests at heart. But under this rating system, as long as the producer incorporates some form of sustainability protocol, this "responsibly grown" produce can get away with using pesticides and still get ranked at the top. This disincentivizes farmers to invest in organic certifications, and tricks consumers into believing that the produce ranked "best" must be of the best quality on Whole Foods' shelves. For those who don't read the fine print, Whole Foods has gotten away with selling consumers something different from what they think they're buying, a blatant manipulation of consumer trust. Whole Foods has long since had the nickname Whole Paycheck in reference to its elevated prices, which have generally been presumed to reflect the chain's alleged higher quality products. But numerous locations faced consequences in 2015, after a series of inspections conducted by the Department of Consumer Affairs found that the stores had been overcharging customers, and doing so since at least 2010. Much of this oversight applied to pre-weighed and packaged meat and produce which, when weighed by inspectors, did not match the price on the packaging. In some instances, this worked in the customers' favor, but more frequently prices were higher than they should have been, and the difference was often many dollars more, not just a matter of cents. While Whole Foods is not the only grocery chain to have been caught overcharging customers in the past -- either intentionally or not -- the brand has been a repeat offender. Guilty locations in both New York and California paid heavy fines for this oversight. Per ABC News, the company's CEOs Walter Robb and John Mackey offered a public apology, attempting to quell unease by admitting they'd made some "mistakes" and promising to offer refunds or free products to customers in the event that they discovered additional overpricing themselves. But this was not enough to satisfy customers. Many consumers have threatened to boycott Whole Foods altogether as a result of this breach of trust. While the overcharging investigation was frustrating enough for consumers, Whole Foods has also frequently offered products mislabeled even more insidiously, in regards to their ingredients. One instance led to the company facing a lawsuit with the State of California in 2008 for selling soaps and cleaning products without mentioning that they contained a potentially carcinogenic ingredient. Whole Foods also faced numerous class action lawsuits in 2014 after disconcerted customers learned that a Whole Foods' store 365 brand of Greek yogurt contained far more sugar than the health-conscious 2 grams listed on the nutrition label, blatant misinformation which had falsely attracted customers to the product. Whole Foods has also faced criticism for undermining its own standards; the company has been accused of not prioritizing non-genetically modified produce or upholding the superiority of antibiotic-free meat. In 2021, there was a controversy over beef labelled as antibiotic-free. A series of tests for cattle producers which sold their beef under the certification "raised without antibiotics" revealed that 15% of these cattle did in fact test for antibiotics. The results suggested that these suppliers, once certified, aren't always honest when left to the honor system. Whole Foods denied the possibility that any such beef containing antibiotics could be on its store shelves, but it was difficult to prove either way. In 2023, customers were further upset to learn that the store had sold them GMO corn subtly labelled "bioengineered" in fine print, another instance that raised some suspicion about the rigor of Whole Foods' alleged standards. Back in 2020, Whole Foods faced widespread criticism for something it deemed was a mere matter of company policy. In support of the Black Lives Matter Movement, a number of Whole Foods employees wanted to wear apparel that displayed the BLM logo, but were quickly discouraged from doing so. Whole Foods stated that this wasn't a race-based stance, as wearing anything that promoted something other than the store itself was against the dress-code policy. But this declaration further miffed many employees, as their own accounts suggest that this dress code wasn't strictly enforced before. A handful of distinctly race-based conflicts have arisen more recently within the network of Whole Foods stores, perhaps in response to an uptick in theft which has plagued the grocery chain as customers shoplift both out of necessity and protest. Being on higher alert for possibly thievery, Whole Foods locations have wrongfully accused numerous customers based solely on their appearance. In 2023, a female customer at a Whole Foods in Silver Spring, Maryland was confronted by a security guard at the exit who insisted she had attempted to steal some items in her cart. The woman believed she had been targeted and publicly humiliated in front of other shoppers because she was wearing a hijab. Earlier in 2025, a black man was wrongfully accused of theft at a Los Angeles Whole Foods, a scene which was caught on video and went viral, posing further bad publicity for the grocery chain. Whole Foods faced more criticism for another aspect of its supply chain -- products produced by prison labor. These came from a program geared towards rehabilitation and providing opportunities for incarcerated people to earn some savings and learn new skills. But the notion of prison labor concerned consumers because of a fear of exploitation, as prison laborers work for low wages and this form of employment is not federally regulated. Since customers voiced being uneasy with this labor source, Whole Foods announced that by 2016 it would stop partnering with suppliers who employed it. A more definitively exploitative problem with Whole Foods' supply chain arose in 2024, pertaining to animal welfare. The ethics of Whole Foods 365 brand of coconut milk was called into question when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent evidence that the chain was producing this milk from coconuts harvested using enslaved monkey labor. When Whole Foods kept silent on the matter, PETA conducted its own investigation and confirmed that some of the chain's coconut suppliers were farms that abused and forced monkeys to harvest the fruit. To swiftly address the problem, the animal rights organization worked directly with the supply chain to seek more ethical sources, thus eliminating the issue of animal labor before Whole Foods could take action. Though resolved, this instance called the transparency of Whole Foods' supply chain into question, as well as the morals of a brand allegedly founded on ethical principles. Despite its emphasis on wholesome ingredients, Whole Foods has sustained a few alarming instances of contaminated products. One of these more extreme cases occurred back in 2020, when the chain's own brand of bottled water was found to have disconcertingly high levels of arsenic. Though drinking a bit of this water wasn't likely to cause detrimental health problems, consuming it regularly could have posed some concerns. And while the chain insisted that the amounts of arsenic still complied with federal standards -- which is technically true -- this Whole Foods' bottled water still had much higher arsenic levels than any other tested brand. Prior to this arsenic contamination, Whole Foods was pressured to make changes in 2018 when a study revealed that the store was the worst of all grocery chains tested for the number of cancerous chemicals present in containers used for takeout, such as bakery items or the infamous salad bar. Though these containers were made from biodegradable materials in an attempt to offer a more environmental solution to plastic, they were coated with toxic substances in order to inhibit leaks. Cancerous chemicals coming into contact with ready-to-eat food seemed to negate Whole Foods' ban on "bad" ingredients, such as high fructose corn syrup, MSG, partially hydrogenated oils, and artificial coloring and additives. In response to public concern, the grocery chain declared that it would removed all harmful containers and seek new, nontoxic compostable packaging to offer in its stores. While Whole Foods does stay true to its list of banned ingredients -- over 300 and counting -- other advertising for wholesome products is more talk than truth. One of the most prevalent descriptors across Whole Foods' many locations is the term "natural," which exists more as a buzzword marketing strategy than anything else. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has since declared its own definition, stating that "natural" means "nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in that food." But regulations for food processing and manufacturing have yet to be addressed. Currently, manufacturers can still employ the term "natural" in their branding, even when food products still contain artificial ingredients. Whole Foods has been guilty of using buzzwords for meat products as well, veiling, according to PETA investigations, a lack of transparency regarding animal treatment. In 2022 the animal welfare organization found evidence of animal cruelty employed by suppliers of some of Whole Foods' "humane" meat. Earlier in 2025, PETA declared that Whole Foods' meats labelled as "animal welfare certified" also came from suppliers employing cruel and inhumane treatments, such as beating animals, for which some culprits were convicted of felony. PETA's outcries have revealed that Whole Foods has essentially been charging premium prices for false assurance on meat products that have still encouraged inhumane practices. In addition to getting in trouble for mislabeling, Whole Foods has also overlooked including certain things on product labels too. Between 2019-2020, the chain recalled at least 32 products under its own brand, for having neglected to list all the major allergens these contained. This was in direct violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which requires product labels to list all major food allergens present, otherwise they are considered illegal if sold. The eight major food allergens identified by the FDA are milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans. Whole Foods' unlisted allergens resulted in a warning from the FDA, which also voiced in a formal letter that the grocery chain had "similar patterns of numerous recalls for undeclared allergens in previous years as well." In 2015, for example, the chain recalled over 33,000 pounds of products due to their containing undeclared allergens. While Whole Foods assured the FDA and its customer base that it was concerned with food safety and would take action to reinforce proper labelling protocols, unlabeled allergens continue to pop up in Whole Foods products, and the chain is continuously haunted by more recalls. In 2022, the grocery chain was subject to numerous recalls for undeclared allergens. In March, 2025, Whole Foods recalled another popular snack for the possible presence of undeclared meat or egg ingredients, revealing that the company's conscientiousness is perpetually inhibited by the inevitable mistakes of mass production. While the matter of recycling is a worldwide issue across every industry, grocery chains also contribute their fair share to the conundrum of single-use plastics. Whole Foods certainly isn't the only major grocery retailer which falls short of recycling, but its more ethical and environmentally conscious branding has brought consumers to hold it to a higher standard. In reality, though the chain would have customers believe it is a more sustainable grocer, it actually falls low on the list of major corporations taking efforts to address their carbon footprints. Despite being the first grocery store in the US to ban disposable plastic grocery bags and drinking straws, a 2022 survey of nationwide Whole Foods locations revealed that the chain has not taken efforts to limit plastic consumption in many other products within its stores. A majority of Whole Foods 365 products, especially, have not been switched to plastic-free packaging, a delay which seems to reflect a lack of initiative despite the chain's pledge to reduce single-use plastics. Featured in a survey conducted by As You Sow, an organization dedicated to promoting corporate responsibility, Whole Foods was examined alongside 50 major corporations for efforts -- or lack thereof -- to mitigate plastic pollution within supply chains. Whole Foods ranked 5th from the bottom, revealing that its branding of environmental awareness and sustainability still remains in large part a successfully projected image rather than a reality. Since Amazon bought Whole Foods, consumers have found the store recognizably changed in many aspects. The new speed-driven mentality borrowed from Amazon warehouse protocols has most substantially altered the chain for its employees, and not for the better. Since Whole Foods started offering free two-hour grocery delivery to Prime customers in 2018, the new added pressure of online orders has subjected workers to an intense and closely surveyed work environment. Tasks are surveilled down to the minute, and orders demand a lot of pressure with their expectation that they will be completed and delivered within a narrow time window. While these new services do provide a new convenience for Whole Foods customers, they have continued to push employees to the limit. The grocery chain further pressured its workers by laying off many of them in 2023 to cut costs, which has overtaxed those who remain in Whole Foods' employment. Matters have gotten so out of hand that the employees at one Philadelphia location decided to file for a union early in 2025. This store's workers belong to the first Whole Foods location to do so, as the company and its CEO John Mackey have historically been against employees forming unions. What this means for the future of the Philadelphia Whole Foods and the fate of other locations remains uncertain, but has at least succeeded in revealing that the nationwide grocery chain is not everything it seems. Hungry for more? Sign up for the free Daily Meal newsletter for delicious recipes, cooking tips, kitchen hacks, and more, delivered straight to your inbox. Read the original article on The Daily Meal.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How Organ Meat Got Into Smoothies
In the video, the man and his burgundy slab of beef liver are best friends. Their bond is revealed in a series of vignettes: The man ties a dog leash around the meat lump and lugs it behind him on a skateboard (afternoon stroll). The man dresses it in sunglasses and a necktie and positions it with a copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations (reading date). The man pulls back his bedsheets to reveal that the liver is his new pillow (slumber party!). It's a joke, clearly, but the video's caption, posted by the nutrition influencer known by the pseudonym Carnivore Aurelius, is earnest: He hopes it inspires his 1 million Instagram followers to eat more beef liver. 'If nutrition were a Roman coliseum, kale would be the defeated gladiator,' he wrote, 'and beef liver would be the lion tearing him to shreds.' This extravagant devotion to organ meats has become common within online wellness communities promoting 'ancestral' diets—a relative of the paleo diet, which endorses the consumption of whole, unprocessed foods. On TikTok, tradwives, carnivore bros and girlies, and holistic wellness influencers tout the benefits of eating organ meat, mostly from cows. Some of them eat it raw; others eat it cooked. The enthusiasm has spawned an industry that turns offal—a catchall term for an animal's nonmuscular parts—into pill or powdered form. 'Sneaking in' organ meats is a recurring theme: Some clips show moms blending beef-liver powder into their toddlers' orange juice and smoothies; one shows a man dropping offal chunks into his partner's ground beef. [Read: America is done pretending about meat] All of this social-media attention has been translating into people's actual eating habits, Victoria Fitzgerald, who oversees Whole Foods Market's meat merchandising, told me. In 2020, the grocery-store chain introduced frozen organ-meat blends into its stores, and every year since, the products have seen triple-digit growth in sales. In some stores in Miami and Austin, Whole Foods' most popular organ-meat product—Force of Nature's 'grass fed beef ancestral blend,' a ground mix that includes beef liver and heart—sells at 15 times the rate of other frozen meat items. The buzzy Los Angeles supermarket Erewhon also got in on the offal hype, selling a $19 'raw animal' smoothie last year made with freeze-dried beef organs. And, like Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, a supermarket chain with stores west of the Mississippi River, named organ-meat products a top trend for 2025. In the United States, this latest revival is particularly striking given how unpopular offal has been with Americans in recent history. Here, organ meats have been regarded with something of a 'yuck factor,' Mark McWilliams, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and the editor of Offal: Rejected and Reclaimed Food, told me. Many Americans view them as 'forbidden and unfamiliar,' he said. And the more unfamiliar a food is, the grosser it might seem to some people to eat. Yet today's fanfare isn't because of a sudden switch-up in Americans' tastes. Rather, the influencers who extol offal's virtues seem to do so on the basis of its nutrient density. Organ meats appear to be viewed less as meals and more as supplements: something to be consumed not primarily for flavor but in pursuit of the influencers' vision of optimal health. For as long as humans have eaten animals, they've eaten offal. The first humans ate the whole animal when they hunted, starting with the heart and brains, according to the chef Jennifer McLagan's book Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. Ancient Romans feasted on goose-feet stew; Greeks ate splanchna, or bowels; Elizabethans nibbled on bird tongues. Organ meats played a key role in the Navajo Nation's traditional diet—and people all over the world continue to eat the whole animal today. Sometime in the late 18th century, though, offal started suffering from an image problem, viewed by some people to be an affordable but second-rate food. McLagan traces this shift in reputation to the rise of slaughterhouses in England, which led to a greater availability of meat as well as an oversupply of perishable, hard-to-ship offal. Instead of tossing these cuts, the slaughterhouses would offer them to poor people who lived nearby. 'The result of this generosity,' McLagan writes, was that organ meats' 'prestige fell.' Around the same time in the United States, offal developed a reputation in some quarters as a food eaten mostly by people of low social status; according to some scholars, enslaved people in the antebellum South were often given the parts of livestock considered less desirable, such as pig's feet, jowls, and small intestines (chitterlings). Even so, into the early 20th century, enough Americans were apparently still eating offal that Irma Rombauer included recipes for liver, brains, and kidneys in her wildly popular 1931 cookbook, Joy of Cooking. But by the 1940s and '50s, organ-meat consumption had begun to taper off. Family farms and butcher shops were giving way to factories and supermarkets. Muscle meats, such as chicken breast and sirloin, became cheaper. 'People forget chicken used to be a very special dish—a roast chicken was something you had on Sundays,' McLagan told me. When eating muscle meat daily became a possibility, many people opted out of offal. (By the time the 1953 edition of Joy of Cooking came out, Rombauer felt the need to add a coy introduction to her organ-meat recipes: 'The following is a hush-hush section, 'just between us girls,'' she wrote.) Since then, organ meats produced in the United States have largely been exported, made into pet food, or simply thrown in the trash. [Read: The WWII campaign to bring organ meats to the dinner table] Many people have tried to rebrand organ meats for wider consumption, to little lasting effect. During World War II, meat rationing led to a government campaign encouraging families to eat offal, which was renamed 'variety meats.' This effort led to a brief boost in popularity, though by the war's end, organ meats were once again mostly abandoned. In the 1990s, the British chef Fergus Henderson popularized the 'nose-to-tail' movement, which primarily focused on animal rights and sustainability and aimed to use as much of the animal as possible. 'If you're going to knock it on the head,' Henderson said, 'it seems only polite to eat the whole thing.' That ethos gained popularity with some Americans too: In 2004, Henderson's cookbook, full of highbrow recipes such as deviled kidneys and potato-stuffed pig's foot, was released in the United States with a glowing introduction by the food celebrity Anthony Bourdain, who called the roast bone marrow at Henderson's restaurant St. John his 'death row meal.' When McLagan released Odd Bits in 2011, she, too, was hopeful that organ meats were on a fast track to the mainstream. Yet the nose-to-tail movement, appealing mostly to fringe foodies, never made a big dent on eating habits. 'I thought that I would change the world with the book,' McLagan told me. 'Of course, I didn't.' The newest organ-meat revival doesn't bother as much with time-intensive recipes—it's far more focused on convenience. Besides ground-meat blends and supplement pills, offal is being sold as salted crisps, chocolate-almond-flavored protein bars, vinegary meat sticks, and freeze-dried powder toppings to be sprinkled on dishes like pizza or steak. Whole Foods is planning to expand its offal selection, Fitzgerald told me; easy-to-cook options such as premade organ-meat burgers and meatballs should soon be available. Today's offal movement is, in part, an offshoot of the carnivore diet—a meat-heavy approach to eating that, despite copious warnings from nutritionists, rose to prominence online beginning around 2018. Controversial influencers such as Paul Saladino, Brian 'Liver King' Johnson, and Joe Rogan all helped popularize the trend. Many influencers have painted organ meats as a miracle food, claiming that eating them had improved ailments such as fatigue, anemia, and hives; in one 2020 podcast, Rogan suggested that eating offal and other types of meat could possibly cure autoimmune disorders. 'Don't believe anything that is too good to be true,' Melissa Fernandez, a professor at the University of Ottawa who studies nutrition influencers and misinformation, told me. Some influencers, she noted, are entrepreneurs whose businesses may benefit from their own nutritional advice. Saladino and Johnson, for instance, each own organ-meat-supplement companies. (Saladino has denied any conflict of interest, saying that organs 'are some of the most nutrient-rich foods on the planet.') [Read: The Jordan Peterson all-meat diet] Despite the scant scientific support for influencers' more extreme health claims, in recent years the offal hype has also extended past carnivore-diet enthusiasts to include a broader, omnivorous group of nutrition-focused eaters. The refrain 'Mother Nature's multivitamin' is fairly ubiquitous on organ-meat social-media posts, where influencers typically list off an alphabet soup of nutrients, among them vitamin A, B12, and iron. Organ meats are also portrayed like munchable fountains of youth: Beef liver has been deemed, at once, 'nature's botox,' 'edible retinol,' and the 'one supplement to make you hotter.' Offal does indeed have lots of nutrients—but like influencers' health assertions, most of these beauty claims have little evidence to support them, Pieter Cohen, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the leader of Cambridge Health Alliance's Supplement Research Program, told me. 'Do I know of any research that has proven that eating organ meat—the food—improves skin, improves mood, or improves the quality of your hair?' Cohen said. 'No.' Consuming organ meats as supplements could actually be harmful to people's health, Cohen and Fernandez said. The supplement industry has little government oversight and is known to be rife with ingredients that are either ineffective or, worse, dangerous. 'I have huge, huge concerns over their safety,' Fernandez said of these new organ-meat supplements. Given organ meats' nutrient density, eating liver every day in any form—whether as a capsule or sautéed with onions—may be hazardous. Fernandez flagged that people could end up consuming too much vitamin A; this is especially notable for pregnant women, who risk the possibility of birth defects through overconsumption, she told me. 'There's actual danger there in toxicity.' (Johnson's Ancestral Supplements and Saladino's Heart & Soil—which the Liver King also co-owns—have both dismissed concerns about vitamin A toxicity, suggesting that their products fall within a safe daily dosage.) That's not to say people should steer clear of organ meats. The nutrition experts I spoke with just advised treating them as actual food instead of supplements, and not eating them every day. Fernandez suggested seeking pleasure in offal, such as by cooking a new dish. And although offal may never become as ubiquitous as muscle meat in American diets, more people eating organ meats could come with some positives. In McWilliams's and McLagan's view, offal provides a real way to combat the moral quandary of meat eating. 'If you're someone who wants to eat meat but is conscious of the problems of industrial food production,' McWilliams told me, 'eating the whole animal is one way out.' Beef liver may not be a gladiator-crushing lion ready to dethrone kale in some fictive nutritional coliseum. But, at the very least, it doesn't need to go in the trash. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
How Organ Meat Got Into Smoothies
In the video, the man and his burgundy slab of beef liver are best friends. Their bond is revealed in a series of vignettes: The man ties a dog leash around the meat lump and lugs it behind him on a skateboard (afternoon stroll). The man dresses it in sunglasses and a necktie and positions it with a copy of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations (reading date). The man pulls back his bedsheets to reveal that the liver is his new pillow (slumber party!). It's a joke, clearly, but the video's caption, posted by the nutrition influencer known by the pseudonym Carnivore Aurelius, is earnest: He hopes it inspires his 1 million Instagram followers to eat more beef liver. 'If nutrition were a Roman coliseum, kale would be the defeated gladiator,' he wrote, 'and beef liver would be the lion tearing him to shreds.' This extravagant devotion to organ meats has become common within online wellness communities promoting 'ancestral' diets—a relative of the paleo diet, which endorses the consumption of whole, unprocessed foods. On TikTok, tradwives, carnivore bros and girlies, and holistic wellness influencers tout the benefits of eating organ meat, mostly from cows. Some of them eat it raw; others eat it cooked. The enthusiasm has spawned an industry that turns offal—a catchall term for an animal's nonmuscular parts—into pill or powdered form. 'Sneaking in' organ meats is a recurring theme: Some clips show moms blending beef-liver powder into their toddlers' orange juice and smoothies; one shows a man dropping offal chunks into his partner's ground beef. All of this social-media attention has been translating into people's actual eating habits, Victoria Fitzgerald, who oversees Whole Foods Market's meat merchandising, told me. In 2020, the grocery-store chain introduced frozen organ-meat blends into its stores, and every year since, the products have seen triple-digit growth in sales. In some stores in Miami and Austin, Whole Foods' most popular organ-meat product—Force of Nature's 'grass fed beef ancestral blend,' a ground mix that includes beef liver and heart—sells at 15 times the rate of other frozen meat items. The buzzy Los Angeles supermarket Erewhon also got in on the offal hype, selling a $19 'raw animal' smoothie last year made with freeze-dried beef organs. And, like Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, a supermarket chain with stores west of the Mississippi River, named organ-meat products a top trend for 2025. In the United States, this latest revival is particularly striking given how unpopular offal has been with Americans in recent history. Here, organ meats have been regarded with something of a 'yuck factor,' Mark McWilliams, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and the editor of Offal: Rejected and Reclaimed Food, told me. Many Americans view them as 'forbidden and unfamiliar,' he said. And the more unfamiliar a food is, the grosser it might seem to some people to eat. Yet today's fanfare isn't because of a sudden switch-up in Americans' tastes. Rather, the influencers who extol offal's virtues seem to do so on the basis of its nutrient density. Organ meats appear to be viewed less as meals and more as supplements: something to be consumed not primarily for flavor but in pursuit of the influencers' vision of optimal health. For as long as humans have eaten animals, they've eaten offal. The first humans ate the whole animal when they hunted, starting with the heart and brains, according to the chef Jennifer McLagan's book Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal. Ancient Romans feasted on goose-feet stew; Greeks ate splanchna, or bowels; Elizabethans nibbled on bird tongues. Organ meats played a key role in the Navajo Nation's traditional diet—and people all over the world continue to eat the whole animal today. Sometime in the late 18th century, though, offal started suffering from an image problem, viewed by some people to be an affordable but second-rate food. McLagan traces this shift in reputation to the rise of slaughterhouses in England, which led to a greater availability of meat as well as an oversupply of perishable, hard-to-ship offal. Instead of tossing these cuts, the slaughterhouses would offer them to poor people who lived nearby. 'The result of this generosity,' McLagan writes, was that organ meats' 'prestige fell.' Around the same time in the United States, offal developed a reputation in some quarters as a food eaten mostly by people of low social status; according to some scholars, enslaved people in the antebellum South were often given the parts of livestock considered less desirable, such as pig's feet, jowls, and small intestines (chitterlings). Even so, into the early 20th century, enough Americans were apparently still eating offal that Irma Rombauer included recipes for liver, brains, and kidneys in her wildly popular 1931 cookbook, Joy of Cooking. But by the 1940s and '50s, organ-meat consumption had begun to taper off. Family farms and butcher shops were giving way to factories and supermarkets. Muscle meats, such as chicken breast and sirloin, became cheaper. 'People forget chicken used to be a very special dish—a roast chicken was something you had on Sundays,' McLagan told me. When eating muscle meat daily became a possibility, many people opted out of offal. (By the time the 1953 edition of Joy of Cooking came out, Rombauer felt the need to add a coy introduction to her organ-meat recipes: 'The following is a hush-hush section, 'just between us girls,'' she wrote.) Since then, organ meats produced in the United States have largely been exported, made into pet food, or simply thrown in the trash. Many people have tried to rebrand organ meats for wider consumption, to little lasting effect. During World War II, meat rationing led to a government campaign encouraging families to eat offal, which was renamed 'variety meats.' This effort led to a brief boost in popularity, though by the war's end, organ meats were once again mostly abandoned. In the 1990s, the British chef Fergus Henderson popularized the 'nose-to-tail' movement, which primarily focused on animal rights and sustainability and aimed to use as much of the animal as possible. 'If you're going to knock it on the head,' Henderson said, 'it seems only polite to eat the whole thing.' That ethos gained popularity with some Americans too: In 2004, Henderson's cookbook, full of highbrow recipes such as deviled kidneys and potato-stuffed pig's foot, was released in the United States with a glowing introduction by the food celebrity Anthony Bourdain, who called the roast bone marrow at Henderson's restaurant St. John his 'death row meal.' When McLagan released Odd Bits in 2011, she, too, was hopeful that organ meats were on a fast track to the mainstream. Yet the nose-to-tail movement, appealing mostly to fringe foodies, never made a big dent on eating habits. 'I thought that I would change the world with the book,' McLagan told me. 'Of course, I didn't.' The newest organ-meat revival doesn't bother as much with time-intensive recipes—it's far more focused on convenience. Besides ground-meat blends and supplement pills, offal is being sold as salted crisps, chocolate-almond-flavored protein bars, vinegary meat sticks, and freeze-dried powder toppings to be sprinkled on dishes like pizza or steak. Whole Foods is planning to expand its offal selection, Fitzgerald told me; easy-to-cook options such as premade organ-meat burgers and meatballs should soon be available. Today's offal movement is, in part, an offshoot of the carnivore diet—a meat-heavy approach to eating that, despite copious warnings from nutritionists, rose to prominence online beginning around 2018. Controversial influencers such as Paul Saladino, Brian 'Liver King' Johnson, and Joe Rogan all helped popularize the trend. Many influencers have painted organ meats as a miracle food, claiming that eating them had improved ailments such as fatigue, anemia, and hives; in one 2020 podcast, Rogan suggested that eating offal and other types of meat could possibly cure autoimmune disorders. 'Don't believe anything that is too good to be true,' Melissa Fernandez, a professor at the University of Ottawa who studies nutrition influencers and misinformation, told me. Some influencers, she noted, are entrepreneurs whose businesses may benefit from their own nutritional advice. Saladino and Johnson, for instance, each own organ-meat-supplement companies. (Saladino has denied any conflict of interest, saying that organs 'are some of the most nutrient-rich foods on the planet.') Despite the scant scientific support for influencers' more extreme health claims, in recent years the offal hype has also extended past carnivore-diet enthusiasts to include a broader, omnivorous group of nutrition-focused eaters. The refrain 'Mother Nature's multivitamin' is fairly ubiquitous on organ-meat social-media posts, where influencers typically list off an alphabet soup of nutrients, among them vitamin A, B12, and iron. Organ meats are also portrayed like munchable fountains of youth: Beef liver has been deemed, at once, ' nature's botox,' ' edible retinol,' and the ' one supplement to make you hotter.' Offal does indeed have lots of nutrients—but like influencers' health assertions, most of these beauty claims have little evidence to support them, Pieter Cohen, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the leader of Cambridge Health Alliance's Supplement Research Program, told me. 'Do I know of any research that has proven that eating organ meat—the food—improves skin, improves mood, or improves the quality of your hair?' Cohen said. 'No.' Consuming organ meats as supplements could actually be harmful to people's health, Cohen and Fernandez said. The supplement industry has little government oversight and is known to be rife with ingredients that are either ineffective or, worse, dangerous. 'I have huge, huge concerns over their safety,' Fernandez said of these new organ-meat supplements. Given organ meats' nutrient density, eating liver every day in any form—whether as a capsule or sautéed with onions—may be hazardous. Fernandez flagged that people could end up consuming too much vitamin A; this is especially notable for pregnant women, who risk the possibility of birth defects through overconsumption, she told me. 'There's actual danger there in toxicity.' (Johnson's Ancestral Supplements and Saladino's Heart & Soil—which the Liver King also co-owns—have both dismissed concerns about vitamin A toxicity, suggesting that their products fall within a safe daily dosage.) That's not to say people should steer clear of organ meats. The nutrition experts I spoke with just advised treating them as actual food instead of supplements, and not eating them every day. Fernandez suggested seeking pleasure in offal, such as by cooking a new dish. And although offal may never become as ubiquitous as muscle meat in American diets, more people eating organ meats could come with some positives. In McWilliams's and McLagan's view, offal provides a real way to combat the moral quandary of meat eating. 'If you're someone who wants to eat meat but is conscious of the problems of industrial food production,' McWilliams told me, 'eating the whole animal is one way out.' Beef liver may not be a gladiator-crushing lion ready to dethrone kale in some fictive nutritional coliseum. But, at the very least, it doesn't need to go in the trash.
