The least familiar thing on our label

Spleen is the one that stops people. We had the same reaction when we started reading about it, so we are not going to pretend it is normal.

Then we looked at the numbers. Beef spleen has around 45mg of iron per 100g raw. Liver has about 5. Steak has 2 or 3. Spinach, which everyone thinks of as the iron food, has about 3, and in a form the body struggles to use. Gram for gram, spleen is the richest iron food you can buy, and it comes with vitamin C in the same tissue, which is what the body needs alongside iron to absorb it. Iron contributes to normal oxygen transport in the body.

The rule of thumb we like is that a healthy organ has in it the nutrients that organ needs to do its job. The spleen's job is blood. It filters it, recycles old red blood cells and holds iron back for making new ones, and it is one of the organs the immune system runs through. We believe eating it is good for exactly those things in us. Our great-grandparents would not have needed telling. Nose-to-tail meant the whole animal, and spleen went into the pot with everything else.

We could have left it out and nobody would have noticed. But the promise on the front of the pouch is the whole animal, and you cannot say that with a straight face and then bin the bits that are hard to market.

So there it is. A small amount of grass-fed bovine spleen, declared on the label like everything else.