Offal also has potential health benefits. It\u2019s packed with protein, vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids<\/a> and often contains more nutrients than the meat that we would usually eat. For example, 100 grams of liver provides around 36%<\/a> of your recommended daily iron but eating the same amount of minced meat would provide around 12%.<\/p>\n Offal was once a popular food choice in the UK during the second world war<\/a>. In Japan, eating offal is motivated by cultural values such as \u201cmottainai\u201d<\/a>, which describes a sense of regret around being wasteful. Similarly, \u201cnose-to-tail\u201d<\/a> eating is becoming more popular in the UK, which is also based on principles around reducing food waste and respecting the animal\u2019s sacrifice.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The nose-to-tail cooking movement is taking off.<\/p>\n Despite the potential health and environmental benefits, getting consumers to accept offal is more difficult than one might expect. Typically, people who haven\u2019t tried offal are disgusted<\/a> by the thought of eating it and often consider it to be contaminated. Others are put off because they just don\u2019t know how to make a tasty meal that their children will also eat.<\/p>\n One way to overcome this is to use offal in a familiar meal with other ingredients. I explored this with other researchers in a recent study<\/a> of 390 UK meat eaters. Specifically, we looked at their opinions of offal in its natural form and compared it to when offal (liver and kidney) was included as an ingredient within minced meat (for instance, \u201coffal-enriched\u201d mince).<\/p>\n We found the offal-enriched mince was considered more acceptable and was expected to be tastier, more satisfying, intriguing and easier to prepare than livers and kidneys. Although, livers and kidneys were expected to be more natural, have less fat and better for the environment than offal-enriched mince.<\/p>\n Men v women<\/p>\n When we compared these ratings across men and women, it was clear that men felt more positive about eating \u201cpure\u201d offal than women. Whereas men and women expressed similar opinions about eating offal within minced meat.<\/p>\n We also compared opinions across six different types of offal-enriched meals, which included a burger, curry, spaghetti bolognese, meatballs, shepherd\u2019s pie and a stir fry. The spaghetti bolognese was a clear favourite for its expected taste, but people were equally curious to try the stir fry, which they also believed would be healthier and more natural than the other meals.<\/p>\n Consumers also answered questions on their personality type and motives for choosing food, which meant we could flesh out the psychology behind why some people are more open to trying offal-enriched meals than others.<\/p>\n On the plus side, it turns out that people who prioritise their health when choosing food think offal-enriched meals would be tastier and more intriguing. However, people who are fearful of eating new foods think the opposite. In psychology, this is known as \u201cfood neophobia\u201d<\/a> and has been linked with less healthier food choices in some populations. In our sample, women had higher food neophobia than men.<\/p>\n Tackling the stigma<\/p>\n There may also be some stigma around eating offal, as we found that people who were more likely to control how they were viewed by others formed more negative opinions of offal-enriched meals. This type of social interaction is known as \u201cimpression management\u201d<\/a> and has been shown to influence food choices.<\/p>\n Much of the offal produced in the UK is exported<\/a> because the consumer demand is low. This means that offal is much cheaper than other meat cuts, such as a steak or a lamb\u2019s leg. However, this could fuel misperceptions about the meat being a lower quality, or that it is chosen by those who cannot afford the expensive cuts.<\/p>\n In reality, eating more of the animal could support a healthy diet and could be a more achievable recommendation for sustainable eating, especially for the men who love their meat.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t have time to read about climate change as much as you\u2019d like?![\"Imagine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762243332_734_file-20250110-17-yge7uv.png\")
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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.<\/a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation\u2019s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who\u2019ve subscribed so far.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meat has a large environmental impact, but could consuming more of it be part of the answer? Meat-eaters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-242922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}