The carnivore diet has produced more arguments per kilojoule of food consumed than almost any other nutritional trend of the last decade. It has also, in the process of generating those arguments, surfaced some genuinely important points about micronutrient density, food processing, and the ancestral basis of human nutrition that the mainstream conversation was underweighting.

Erling Haaland's reported eating habits sit at an interesting point in this debate. He doesn't appear to follow a strict carnivore protocol. But his reported consumption of grass-fed organ meats — specifically heart and liver — reflects an engagement with one of the things the carnivore movement has actually got right.

What Organ Meats Actually Contain (And Why It Matters)

Liver is often described as nature's multivitamin, and the description is accurate in ways that most people don't fully appreciate. Per 100 grams, grass-fed beef liver contains approximately 70 times the daily requirement for vitamin B12, one of the richest whole-food sources of preformed vitamin A (retinol), significant quantities of folate, iron, copper, and zinc, CoQ10 — a compound central to mitochondrial energy production — and a fat-soluble vitamin profile that most modern diets are chronically short in.

Beef heart is slightly different in profile — lower in vitamin A, higher in CoQ10, with a muscle-meat protein profile that makes it essentially a highly nutritious conventional cut. The fact that it's classified as an organ is partly historical and partly anatomical rather than a reflection of radically different nutritional content from beef steak.

Why Grass-Fed Specifically — And Does It Matter?

The grass-fed distinction is not marketing. The fatty acid profile of grass-fed beef differs meaningfully from grain-fed beef: higher omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, higher CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) content, and higher fat-soluble vitamin levels — particularly vitamin K2 (MK-4), which is almost absent in grain-fed animals and plays a role in arterial health and calcium metabolism.

For organ meats specifically, the sourcing question matters even more than for muscle meats. The liver is a filtration organ, and while it does not store toxins (it processes them for excretion), the quality of what passes through it — and therefore the health of the animal — affects the nutritional profile of the organ itself. A grass-fed, pasture-raised animal produces organ meats with a different nutrient profile to a feedlot animal, and the difference is measurable.

What the Carnivore Movement Gets Right (And Wrong)

The carnivore community's rediscovery of organ meats is a genuine contribution to the nutritional conversation. The ancestral eating framework — whatever its other limitations — correctly identifies that traditional populations who ate nose-to-tail had micronutrient intakes that dwarfed modern averages.

Where the more extreme versions of carnivore go wrong is in the exclusion framework: the idea that removing plant foods solves more problems than it creates. The evidence for whole food plant diversity supporting gut microbiome health, anti-inflammatory phytochemical intake, and long-term cardiometabolic outcomes is substantial enough that excluding it entirely on the basis of elimination-protocol anecdotes isn't warranted.

What Any Athlete Can Take From the Organ Meat Argument

You don't need to overhaul your diet to benefit from the principle that organ meats represent. The practical entry points are accessible:

• Grass-fed liver once a week provides a micronutrient load that's difficult to replicate from any other single food source
• Grass-fed beef products improve the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of your diet meaningfully without requiring supplementation
• Whole food animal products remain the most bioavailable sources of B12, haem iron, zinc, and retinol
• Sourcing matters more for organ meats than for any other animal product — pasture-raised is worth the additional cost

"The most nutrient-dense foods in the human diet are also the ones that have been consistently deprioritised by modern convenience culture. Haaland is one of the highest-profile examples of someone choosing differently."