David Flaugher, 26 years old, dices potatoes as he waits for his dinner to cook. Sautéing in a cast iron skillet are slices of beef liver that Flaugher purchased this morning at a local farmer’s market in Traverse City, Michigan. As the livers cook, the air smells increasingly musty and metallic. “The liver is the best part. It has a bloody flavor, but not a bad bloody flavor, just maybe one you wouldn’t be used to” he said.

      Something many people do not realize is that animals are not made of steaks. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, cuts of meat sold wrapped in cellophane at grocery stores only make up an average of 56% of a cow’s weight. The rest is called offal, defined as parts that can be used as food, but which are not skeletal muscle. The term literally means “off fall,” or the pieces which fall from a carcass when it is butchered.  With a name that sounds like “awful” and a definition that includes the words “entrails” and “organs” it’s not surprising that the concept of eating offal makes many enthusiastic carnivores recoil in disgust. However, Megan Perry, policy researcher for the Sustainable Food Trust in the United Kingdom, says “eating offal is getting almost fashionable in the sustainability world.”

     Flaugher is one of a small, but increasing number of young people who choose to consume a diet that includes offal. His parents owned a bakery and had many friends who ran small farms around Marilla Township, Michigan. He grew up eating this way, unaware that most Americans get meat from grocery stores, not family friends. He got more into the habit of eating offal once his family moved to a farm of their own when he was 13-years- old and began raising sheep and butchering pigs. “We tried to eat everything because we put a lot of time and effort into raising the animal and you wouldn’t want to just throw that out.”

     A similar sentiment is repeated by Brandon Johns, owner and chef at Grange in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Every bit of skin, every bit of bone, every bit of everything- you have to make money on it.” Restaurants like Grange, which focus on local, sustainable food, spend money on whole animals from small organic farms, and when you’re spending a premium price for your meat, you have to get the most out of it. Johns says eating offal is making a comeback in some American restaurants. As American restaurant goers become more conscious about where their food comes from, more restaurants are doing what Grange does- buying whole animals and butchering it themselves instead of ordering pre-cut steaks from large distributors.

     According to Perry, buying the whole animal is the most sustainable option when it comes to buying meat. “There is a bit of a problem with there being too many animals in an especially intensive system. Obviously if you eat more of each animal, then you can reduce the overall number of livestock needed, which reduces the overall environmental impact of producing them” she said.

      Flaugher’s family no longer owns their farm. They have since moved to the city, and have to buy their meat the way most Americans do. He says he chooses to buy offal not because of sustainability, but because it is both a nutrient dense and economical dish. Buying organic is something Flaugher tries to do as often as possible, and organic kidney is much cheaper than organic steaks.

     Experts echo those health benefits of offal. “Organ meat is very nutrient dense compared to regular cuts of meat or meat substitutes. It’s higher in iron, zinc, and B12,” says University of Michigan Health Services registered dietician Julie Stocks. However, it is also important to choose one’s offal wisely. At the Sustainable Food Trust, they advocate for buying only grass-fed, organic livestock. “Especially the offal - say liver or kidneys- if they have been fed antibiotics or chemicals, then they might not be very good for people to eat because that is where all of those toxins would accumulate,” says Perry. It is also important not to overdo it. Director of the University of Michigan’s Program in Human Nutrition Susan Aaronson says to be cautious of the fact that offal is often high in cholesterol. “When preparing correctly and incorporating them in an otherwise healthy diet, offal can be included without harm, unless you have heart disease where you might want to be cautious of your cholesterol ingestion.”

      At Grange, choosing to buy whole animals has paid off. Now, customers come into Grange with the idea that they will encounter something unusual. One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is fried pig's head, made by boiling the whole head, removing the meat, and forming it into seasoned patties that resemble crab cakes. Last year, they put it on the menu expecting nobody to be interested. However, it sold out in just two hours. It’s been on the menu ever since. Hollis Wyatt, a young woman whose first experience with offal was the fried pig’s head at Grange said, “I was expecting a severed head on a platter, but it was surprisingly normal- very tender and rich.”

     Johns is not the only Ann Arbor chef choosing to purchase meat this way. Chef Adam Galloway of Vinology on Main Street also purchases whole, local animals and incorporates offal into the menu, although he objects to the name. “I like to consider it the ‘fifth quarter,’” says Galloway, “A little nicer way of saying it.” According to Galloway, offal “permeates” the menu at Vinology. Guests can sample various types of offal in once dish, such as the beef cheek pierogies, which are dumplings, stuffed with blood-braised beef cheeks and served with bone marrow. “ It comes out of the kitchen and it’s literally a bone that the diner scoops marrow out of- we aren’t disguising it at all.” Although he said offal was a tough sell a few years ago, it has been extremely well received as of late. “I think the diners of Ann Arbor are really embracing nose to tail dining.”

      Though eating offal may be catching on in some restaurants, Johns says this is not the case in the home kitchen, where most families chose to buy their meat conveniently cut up and plastic wrapped.  “People aren’t used to it. They grow up totally disconnected from where meat comes from. Anybody can put salt on a steak and cook it, but you can’t really do that to a heart or feet. You have to have technique” said Johns.

There is a history behind the adherence to consuming offal in Western societies, which has led to why many Americans don’t know the technique Brandon speaks of. According to Perry, everybody ate offal until the end of the Second World War. However, after the war, people got wealthier, agriculture intensified, and importing meat became more common. Soon many of the smaller butchers disappeared and the previous system changed. “People started buying the expensive cuts of meat, so nobody grew up eating the bits that we think of as not very nice. In reality, we just aren't used to eating them anymore” said Perry.

     Although they may be few and far between, Margot Finn is one Ann Arbor resident who choses to cook offal at home. She was first introduced to offal while honeymooning in Paris, when she ordered pork kidneys accidentally, and found them to be delicious. Finn occasionally buys beef liver from Busch’s, or cooks up the livers that come inside chickens she gets from her CSA. She says she like to cook offal, but it isn’t easy to get your hands on. “I really only cook at home with liver because you can get it anywhere, where other organ meats have to be requested special.” As a wife, mother, and lecturer at the University of Michigan, she doesn’t have much time for chasing down types of offal that aren’t readily available to her.

According to Bob Sparrow, owner of Sparrow Market & Butchery in Ann Arbor, Michigan, patterns are changing. “Recently, I have noticed an increase in younger ones [customers]- ages 25-35 asking for things like hearts or kidneys.”

       These “younger ones” Sparrow speaks of are people like Wyatt and Flaugher- consumers who, along with chefs like Brandon Johns and Adam Galloway, are embracing the offal parts of an animal. Megan Perry thinks this decade is a new beginning for offal. “It went through a phase even until this century when it was seen as gross and what poorer people eat, but it’s changing.” When asked about offal trends in Ann Arbor, Chef Galloway agrees that offal adherence is becoming a thing of the past, and that there has absolutely been increase in offal consumption. “I think it will continue to increase in the future. Restaurants are on the cutting edge of food trends. If people see offal in restaurants, it will eventually trickle down to the home cook.”