Patricia Thompson - NUTRITION TALK READERS' FEEDBACK
A reader asked our nutritionist "if there are any nutritional benefits (or risks) in eating foods like cow foot, pig trotters, liver (those kinds of 'marginal' meats".
NUTRITIONIST'S RESPONSE
The practice of using limbs and organs of animals as meat in our diet has its roots in slavery, when cheap food was provided for the slaves. These food items are generally termed offals and it is a credit to our ancestors that they were able to use traditional wisdom in preparing them in nutritious ways. Food items like 'cow foot', pig's feet (trotters), oxtail, pig's tail and chicken feet and giblets became Jamaican favourites.
ANIMAL LIMBS
We should note that traditionally, these bony meats were always cooked with dried peas and beans such as oxtail with butter beans, pig's tail with stewed, red peas and trotters with broad beans. The peas or beans complemented these 'meats' in terms of their protein value while shifting the balance of nutrients in favour of more carbohydrate to less fat.
Offals, like other meats, are a main source of protein and fat in our diets. Limbs, unlike muscle meat, are very bony so that very little flesh is available for consumption. The waste for trotters, for example, is 45 per cent which means that weight for weight, only about half the amount purchased will be edible. Both pig trotters and lean pork have on average 20g protein in 100g (3.5 ounces).
If you ate this amount of lean pork flesh, you would get the 20g protein but if you ate the same amount of trotters, you would get only 12g protein. The dried peas or beans could then make up the difference so that the two dishes would be comparable in protein. Limbs are considered red meat and will therefore have the same amount of the mineral, iron as found in muscle meats.
If bony meats were eaten without the skin and fat, found just below the skin, then the fat content would be less than other 'red' meats. Since the calorie content is dependent on the amount of fat, the lean limb would then be lower in calories than muscle meat. Where the fat is hard to remove, the bony meats would be higher in fat content, as for example chicken neck and back with about 25g fat for a 100g serving, compared to about 15g in the chicken thigh or wing. Chicken foot also has about 15g fat per 100g.
ORGAN MEATS
Edible organs are usually 'nutritionally dense' since they form the body's storage reservoir. Liver has on average seven times more iron than muscle meat and it is so rich in vitamin A, that just one serving per week, would meet the basic need of pre-formed vitamin A for a whole week. Chicken giblets are also a good source of iron and vitamin A, although less so than other organ meats.
Liver is a reservoir for waste as well as nutrients and offals are generally rich in the waste product uric acid, which must be avoided by persons with the joint disease known as gout. Organ meats are also rich in cholesterol since this substance protects these delicate organs from damage.
Brain is especially rich in cholesterol with three times more than that found in egg. Three ounces liver or kidney have about two-thirds the amount of cholesterol as one egg. This is about three to six times more than you would find in the other types of meat. However, organs are generally low in fat, with muscle meat carrying three to six times more fat than the organ meats.
Offals, when included in the diet should therefore preferably be prepared by the traditional method with peas and beans and served with local provisions that will supplement the dietary fibre, potassium and carbohydrate requirements.
Patricia Thompson M.Sc., Registered Nutritionist, The Nutrition Centre, Eden Gardens.
