Beef Liver: Benefits, Nutrition, How Much to Eat & Pregnancy

Dr. Josh Axe · Free quiz

Organ Health Quiz

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Beef liver is the liver of cattle. In the animal, the liver stores vitamins and minerals for the rest of the body,56 which is why a few ounces of this organ meat carry more nutrition than almost anything else you can put on a plate. Beef liver is on our list of the most nutrient-dense foods for its high amounts of iron, vitamin A and B12.1

On my show, I've described liver as nature's multivitamin.7 I count organ meats among my desert island foods, part of the nose-to-tail tradition of using every part of the animal.8 Yet most of us have stopped eating organ meats the way our ancestors did, even though they're as critical to the body as muscle meat or bone broth.9

You don't need much of it, and if the taste isn't for you, there are easy ways around it.

Vitamin B12 shows how concentrated it is: beef liver has about fifty times more B12 than steak.8

Folate is the other standout. Of the foods I compare on this page, beef liver is #2 in folate, behind only chicken liver: per 100 grams, pan-fried beef liver has 260 mcg, against 578 mcg in chicken liver, 194 mcg in raw spinach and 181 mcg in cooked lentils, two foods known for their folate.2165758

Did you know?

• Some cultures consider liver too sacred for human hands to touch, so it's handled only with a spear or another instrument.8

• More than 80% of the vitamin A in a liver sits in one type of cell, the hepatic stellate cells, which store it for the rest of the body.6

• Only 10.8% of Americans aged 2 and older get the adequate intake of choline, according to national survey data from 2009 to 2012.10

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What is beef liver?

Fresh beef liver is smooth, dense and deep reddish brown, with a rich, mineral flavor that some people find strong. Besides storing nutrients, the liver filters the blood and processes what the animal eats.5 You'll find it sliced fresh or frozen at butcher shops and farmers markets, ground into blends with beef, and dried into powder for desiccated liver capsules.

Beef liver is one of several organ meats, along with heart and kidney. In Heal Your Cells, Dr. Will Cole and I call organ meats like liver, heart and kidney nutritional goldmines that deliver peptides, cofactors and micronutrients like B12, zinc and choline.12 Our guide to offal covers the others, and is liver good for you? compares liver from different animals.

A short history of liver as food and medicine

Organ meats hold a long place in traditional medicine. Organs have been valued in traditional Chinese medicine for more than three thousand years, on the traditional principle, not yet tested in modern studies, that eating an animal's organ benefits the same organ in your own body.8

Liver also made medical history. In 1926, George Minot and William Murphy reported on 45 patients with pernicious anemia, an autoimmune condition that leaves the body short of vitamin B12,13 who ate a special diet built around 120 to 240 grams (about 4 to 8 ounces) of cooked calf's or beef liver a day.3 Their average red-cell count rose from 1.47 million per cubic millimeter before the diet to 3.40 million after about 1 month, 4.16 million at about 2 months and 4.50 million at 4 to 6 months; the later averages cover 37 and then 27 patients, because the rest had started the diet more recently. Within the first week, young red cells called reticulocytes jumped from about 1% to around 8% of all red cells in each of the 15 patients tracked daily. The study had no comparison group, and the authors described a "prompt, rapid and distinct remission" in every patient.3

Beef liver nutrition facts

Beef liver, pan-fried, per 3-ounce (85 g) serving and per 100 g. Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC ID 168627; per-serving values calculated from the per-100-gram values; % Daily Value uses FDA reference values.211

One serving gives you more than a day's worth of five nutrients at once: B12, copper, vitamin A, riboflavin and pantothenic acid. That's why the amount matters more with liver than with almost any other food. The how-much section below sets it.

Cooking changes the numbers. Per 100 grams, USDA lists braised beef liver at 9,440 mcg of vitamin A and 70.6 mcg of B12, against 7,744 mcg and 83.1 mcg for pan-fried, and raw liver at 4,970 mcg and 59.3 mcg, partly because raw liver still holds its water, 70.8 grams per 100.14152 If a label lists vitamin A in international units, 7,744 mcg RAE is about 26,100 IU.2

How does beef liver compare with chicken liver, steak and kale?

Per 100 grams: the meats cooked, the kale raw. Source: USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy; cooking methods differ by record, as named.2161759

Gram for gram, pan-fried beef liver has about 51 times the B12 of broiled flank steak and about 49 times that of broiled top sirloin, which lists 1.71 mcg per 100 grams.1718 That's the roughly 50-fold gap mentioned above. Chicken liver brings more iron, folate and selenium, with less vitamin A and copper, so both livers earn a place in your week; our chicken liver pâté is an easy way to start.16

I've written that liver surpasses even kale in vitamins and minerals, and kale, also on our list of the most nutrient-dense foods, shows where a top vegetable wins and where liver does.81 Gram for gram, raw kale has far more vitamin C (93.4 mg against 0.7 mg), vitamin K (390 mcg against 3.9 mcg) and calcium (254 mg against 6 mg). Pan-fried beef liver has 83.1 mcg of B12 where kale has none, about 32 times the vitamin A, 275 times the copper, nearly 10 times the riboflavin and about 4 times the folate and iron.259 Kale is about 90% water, which makes it light on calories, so the two do different jobs, and both belong in your week.59

What is beef liver good for?

How does beef liver work in your body?

On my show, I've said organ meats are the most powerful foods for supporting methylation in your body, and liver shows why.9 Methylation is the chemistry your cells use to hand small carbon groups, called methyl groups, from one molecule to another, and it runs on vitamin B12, folate, riboflavin and choline, all of which liver supplies.1920 The steps below are the established biochemistry of each nutrient; a liver meal's effect on methylation hasn't been measured directly.

The riboflavin step shows up in research on people. In a placebo-controlled trial of 91 adults with treated high blood pressure and two copies of the MTHFR 677T variant, a riboflavin supplement of 1.6 mg a day for 16 weeks lowered systolic blood pressure 5.6 mmHg more than placebo.21 A 2025 Cochrane review of 4 trials in 374 people found diastolic pressure 3.03 mmHg lower with riboflavin (2 trials, 271 people); the 1.94 mmHg drop in systolic pressure (3 trials, 320 people) was too small to rule out chance, and the reviewers rated the evidence very low certainty.24

My bloodwork protocol reads homocysteine as the functional methylation readout, with a target under 7 µmol/L, and it lists MTHFR variants and low folate, B12, B6, choline and betaine among the root causes of a high number.13

Beef liver benefits, ranked by evidence

Ranked by the evidence, beef liver's benefits start with red blood cells and iron, then vitamin B12, methylation, choline and energy and detoxification.

Is beef liver good for anemia and low iron?

I describe organ meats as protective against anemia, and liver feeds your blood from several directions at once.8 It brings heme iron, the type your body absorbs best, along with B12, folate and copper, the nutrients red-cell production depends on.28 Your body also absorbs more iron from mixed diets (an estimated 14% to 18%) than from vegetarian diets (5% to 12%), in figures calculated for people with no iron stores.29 Our guides to iron deficiency and anemia symptoms cover the signs to watch for.

A modern trial in Egypt tested liver as an everyday food for children. Researchers randomly assigned 60 children aged 3 to 9 from a kindergarten and a primary school, most of them with mild or moderate anemia, either to eat fried meatballs made from chicken liver and beef three times a week for 90 days (one meatball for the younger children, two for the older ones) or to continue their usual diet with no supplement. In the meatball group, the number of children with anemia fell from 22 of 30 to 2 of 30, while the control group went from 24 of 30 to 23. Hemoglobin rose from 11.6 to 12.9 g/dL in the younger children who ate the meatballs and from 11.66 to 12.8 g/dL in the older ones, and barely moved in the control group.4 The meatballs combined chicken liver with beef, so the result belongs to that recipe rather than to beef liver alone.

Iron from plant foods absorbs better with vitamin C,28 and for low ferritin, my bloodwork protocol lists red meat, liver and sardines alongside vitamin C foods.13 Test before you lean on liver to fix a problem: ask your doctor for ferritin and a full iron panel (iron, TIBC and percent saturation), which show whether low iron is the issue and also catch the opposite, iron overload, covered in the safety section.13

Is beef liver safe during pregnancy?

Support for a healthy pregnancy is on my list of the benefits of organ meats, and the Maasai tribe of eastern Africa reserves organs such as the heart or kidney for young male warriors and pregnant women.8

Choline is liver's standout for pregnancy. The adequate intake rises to 450 mg a day in pregnancy, and a 3-ounce serving supplies 355 mg.272 Pregnant women's average intakes fall far below that mark.20 In a controlled feeding study, 26 women entering their third trimester ate either 930 or 480 mg of choline a day (13 in each group) while neither the women nor the researchers knew who got what; among the 24 babies tested, those whose mothers got 930 mg processed information faster in tests from 4 to 13 months of age, in a study partly funded by egg and beef industry groups.22 The same serving adds B12, folate and iron. See our pregnancy diet and prenatal vitamins guides for the rest of the plate.

Vitamin A is the reason for the caution: very high preformed vitamin A intake can be a problem, especially in pregnancy.30 Here's how one serving compares with the daily upper limits that apply in pregnancy:

Sources: USDA FoodData Central, FDC ID 168627; Institute of Medicine upper limits for vitamin A, copper and vitamin B12.2303132

The research on vitamin A in pregnancy points in more than one direction. In a study that followed 22,748 pregnant women, the rate of certain birth defects rose when women took more than about 10,000 IU (3,000 mcg) a day of preformed vitamin A from supplements, with the extra risk concentrated in the first 7 weeks.3330 Two other studies found no rise in major malformations at those intakes: one followed 423 pregnancies exposed to 10,000 IU or more a day in the first 9 weeks, with 311 babies checked, and the other compared 1,508 women.3435

Food-safety agencies take a cautious line here: the European Food Safety Authority advises women who are planning a pregnancy or are pregnant not to eat liver products, and the UK's National Health Service lists liver among the foods to avoid in pregnancy.3637

If you're pregnant or planning to be, bring the numbers above to your OB before you eat liver, and since desiccated liver capsules are a concentrate, confirm the dose with your OB.

How much beef liver should you eat?

My choline prescription puts it in context: 2 pastured eggs a day, or 2 eggs 2 to 3 days a week, and then 3 ounces of beef liver once a week, because liver is so high in choline.26 Liver's vitamin A sets the ceiling, so here's what those amounts add up to:

Pan-fried beef liver, USDA FoodData Central, FDC ID 168627. The adult upper limit for preformed vitamin A is 3,000 mcg a day from all foods and supplements combined.230

A single 3-ounce serving holds 6,582 mcg of vitamin A and 12.4 mg of copper, above the daily upper limits of 3,000 mcg and 10 mg, but once a week it averages well under both before you count other foods, which is why liver works best as a weekly food.23031 If you take a multivitamin, cod liver oil or another supplement with vitamin A, count it toward the total. Pregnancy has its own guidance, in the section above.

Are beef liver capsules as good as fresh liver?

Desiccated liver is liver that's been dried and ground into powder. These days I take liver and glandular supplements regularly.38 Raw beef liver is 70.8% water, so each gram of desiccated liver starts as roughly 3.4 grams of raw liver, an estimate by weight; matching 3 ounces of raw liver would take about 25 grams of powder.15 Check the grams of liver per serving on the label to see how your capsules compare. See our guide to organ and liver supplements for more.

The one human study of desiccated beef liver tested it as a fortifier in toddlers' meals and measured acceptance rather than a health outcome. In Indonesia, mothers of 96 children aged 12 to 23 months rated foods with added liver powder at neutral or better and said they'd keep using it for its nutritional value.39

What to look for on the label:

• Single-source bovine liver from grass-fed or pasture-raised cattle.

• Published species and contaminant testing. In a DNA study of 53 bovine liver supplements bought online, one also contained pork that wasn't on the label.40

• A label that follows the rules. In a review of 49 U.S. bovine liver supplement labels, 59% broke at least one federal labeling rule, and 39% gave no U.S. address or phone number for reporting a reaction.41

• Grams of liver per serving, so you can count it toward your weekly portion.

How to cook beef liver so it tastes good

I used to sauté chicken liver with garlic, onions and coconut oil and eat it once a week.38 The same treatment works for beef liver: thin slices, a hot pan and plenty of onions. At home, my wife and I buy grass-fed beef blended with liver and heart, so you don't even taste the organs.26

How to buy and store beef liver

Choose liver from grass-fed or pasture-raised cattle. In a study comparing cattle raised on pasture with cattle fed grain, pasture-fed animals carried beta-carotene in their tissues, the liver included, while grain-fed cattle had essentially none outside small amounts in the liver.42 Copper varies from herd to herd too: cattle are often given extra copper in their feed,43 and the four samples behind USDA's figure ranged from 7.35 to 19.3 mg of copper per 100 grams.2

Keep red meat fresh, unprocessed and grass-fed. The WHO's cancer agency classifies processed meat of every kind, processed beef included, as a Group 1 carcinogen, largely on colorectal cancer data, and rates red meat itself Group 2A, probably carcinogenic.4445 As I've said on my show, the studies that link red meat to poor health mostly reflect grain-fed and processed meat, not the fresh, grass-fed red meat I recommend.46

Liverwurst, braunschweiger and other liver sausages are processed meats, so leave them on the shelf, and check that any store-bought pâté is made from beef or chicken liver, never pork. A homemade pâté gives you the same spreadable texture from fresh liver.

Calf's liver comes from younger animals and tends to carry less cadmium: in a survey of cattle in Spain, calves' livers averaged 7.78 micrograms of cadmium per kilogram, against 83.3 in older cows.47 Fresh liver is perishable, so keep it cold and cook it soon after you buy it, or freeze it.

Beef liver side effects and who should be careful

Because liver is so concentrated, a few situations call for less of it, or none:

• Too much vitamin A. In a pooled analysis of cohort studies with 319,077 people, higher retinol intake was linked to a 5% lower risk of fractures overall and a 40% higher risk of hip fracture.52 In a 2026 review of 31 published reports of vitamin A toxicity, mostly single case reports, the source in 21 was vitamin A capsules or tablets.53 Keep liver to about 3 ounces once a week and count other vitamin A sources; if your bloodwork shows vitamin A running high, cut back and work with your practitioner.

• Copper and Wilson's disease. One serving has 12.4 mg of copper, above the 10 mg daily upper limit, which is set to protect the liver from damage.231 Your body absorbs a smaller share of copper as intake rises, but a review of dietary copper in Wilson's disease names liver as one of only two foods that patients on treatment still need to restrict, so with Wilson's disease, skip liver.49

• Iron overload and hemochromatosis. Your body has no active way to excrete extra iron, and in hemochromatosis the iron-regulating hormone hepcidin runs too low, so iron builds up.2954 My bloodwork protocol routes high ferritin to hemochromatosis testing and therapeutic phlebotomy, and a systematic review estimated, from three small long-term studies, that limiting iron absorption from food could cut the blood that needs removing by 0.5 to 1.5 liters a year.1350 If iron overload runs in your family, test ferritin first; with hemochromatosis, skip liver unless your doctor says otherwise.

• Gout. Beef liver has 219.8 mg of purines per 100 grams, which a Japanese analysis classes as a large amount; the Japanese gout guidance it cites keeps purines under 400 mg a day.51 With gout, keep liver small and occasional, and see our low-purine diet.

• Children. Upper limits for preformed vitamin A are 600 mcg a day at ages 1 to 3, 900 at 4 to 8 and 1,700 at 9 to 13, and for copper 1, 3 and 5 mg.3031 One ounce of pan-fried liver has about 2,200 mcg of vitamin A and 4.1 mg of copper, so set your child's amount with their practitioner.2

The bottom line

Beef liver: frequently asked questions

References

1. Top 20 Nutrient-Dense Foods and Their Benefits. DrAxe.com. 2024 ("12. Liver": "Liver —particularly beef liver — is incredibly nutrient-dense, with high amounts of iron, vitamin A and B12").
2. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Beef, variety meats and by-products, liver, cooked, pan-fried. FDC ID 168627. SR Legacy.
3. Minot GR, Murphy WP. Treatment of pernicious anemia by a special diet. 1926. Yale J Biol Med. 2001;74(5):341-53. PMID:11769340
4. Bassouni R, Soliman M, Hussein LA, Monir Z, Abd El-Meged AA. Development and evaluating the biopotency of ready to eat liver meat balls in fighting anaemia and vitamin A deficiency, improving selected nutritional biochemical indicators and promoting the cognitive function among mildly anaemic Egyptian children aged 3-9 years. Public Health Nutr. 2022;25(11):3182-3194. doi:10.1017/S1368980022000970. PMID:35451359
5. Kalra A, Yetiskul E, Wehrle CJ, Tuma F. Physiology, Liver. In: StatPearls. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing.
6. Blaner WS, Li Y, Brun PJ, Yuen JJ, Lee SA, Clugston RD. Vitamin A Absorption, Storage and Mobilization. Subcell Biochem. 2016;81:95-125. doi:10.1007/978-94-024-0945-1_4. PMID:27830502
7. Axe J. 3 EASY Skincare Swaps That Lower Toxins FAST (in 3 days!). The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2026 (Dr. Axe speaking; segment times from the episode transcript on draxe.com: liver as nature's multivitamin in the 23:40 segment).
8. Axe J, Rubin J. The Biblio Diet. Hachette Book Group; 2025. ISBN 9781546008439. Organ meats among the desert island foods (ebook p. 52, including liver surpassing kale, spinach and broccoli in vitamins and minerals), and the organ meats section of chapter 8, Meat as Medicine, with its liver entry (ebook p. 85).
9. Axe J. Fix Fertility, Thyroid, Anxiety & Sleep With This Methylation SECRET. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2024 (Dr. Axe speaking; timestamps from the episode's YouTube upload, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7o-tBhAqs: organ meats as critical as muscle meat or bone broth at 22:13-22:27; "If you don't like the taste of organ meats, then you can take them as a tablet or a capsule" at 22:27-22:33; organ meats as the most powerful foods for methylation at 22:33-22:44).
10. Wallace TC, Fulgoni VL 3rd. Assessment of Total Choline Intakes in the United States. J Am Coll Nutr. 2016;35(2):108-12. doi:10.1080/07315724.2015.1080127. PMID:26886842
11. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts labels. fda.gov
12. Axe J, Cole W. Heal Your Cells. Avery; 2026. ISBN 9798217181353. Chapter "Personalized Nutrition for Cellular Healing" (organ meats as nutritional goldmines).
13. Axe J. The 25 Root-Cause Bloodwork Markers That Matter Most. DrAxe.com protocol. 2026. Ferritin, MMA, copper:zinc ratio and homocysteine entries.
14. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Beef, variety meats and by-products, liver, cooked, braised. FDC ID 168626. SR Legacy.
15. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Beef, variety meats and by-products, liver, raw. FDC ID 169451. SR Legacy.
16. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Chicken, liver, all classes, cooked, simmered. FDC ID 171061. SR Legacy.
17. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Beef, flank, steak, separable lean and fat, trimmed to 0" fat, all grades, cooked, broiled. FDC ID 168733. SR Legacy.
18. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Beef, top sirloin, steak, separable lean only, trimmed to 0" fat, all grades, cooked, broiled. FDC ID 168634. SR Legacy.
19. Froese DS, Fowler B, Baumgartner MR. Vitamin B(12) , folate, and the methionine remethylation cycle-biochemistry, pathways, and regulation. J Inherit Metab Dis. 2019;42(4):673-685. doi:10.1002/jimd.12009. PMID:30693532
20. Zeisel SH, da Costa KA. Choline: an essential nutrient for public health. Nutr Rev. 2009;67(11):615-23. doi:10.1111/j.1753-4887.2009.00246.x. PMID:19906248
21. Wilson CP, McNulty H, Ward M, Strain JJ, Trouton TG, Hoeft BA, et al. Blood pressure in treated hypertensive individuals with the MTHFR 677TT genotype is responsive to intervention with riboflavin: findings of a targeted randomized trial. Hypertension. 2013;61(6):1302-8. doi:10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.111.01047. PMID:23608654
22. Caudill MA, Strupp BJ, Muscalu L, Nevins JEH, Canfield RL. Maternal choline supplementation during the third trimester of pregnancy improves infant information processing speed: a randomized, double-blind, controlled feeding study. FASEB J. 2018;32(4):2172-2180. doi:10.1096/fj.201700692RR. PMID:29217669
23. McAuley E, McNulty H, Hughes C, Strain JJ, Ward M. Riboflavin status, MTHFR genotype and blood pressure: current evidence and implications for personalised nutrition. Proc Nutr Soc. 2016;75(3):405-14. doi:10.1017/S0029665116000197. PMID:27170501
24. Bradbury KE, Coffey S, Earle N, Ni Mhurchu C, Jull AB. Riboflavin supplements for blood pressure lowering in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2025;10(10):CD015464. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD015464.pub2. PMID:41123035
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26. Axe J. You Were Lied To About Fat — Your Cells Are Paying the Price. The Dr. Josh Axe Show (YouTube). October 5, 2026 (Dr. Axe speaking: liver as the number one source of choline at 13:53-14:09; his choline prescription, with 3 ounces of beef liver once a week, at 15:36-16:09; the grass-fed beef blended with liver and heart that he and his wife buy at 16:09-16:21).
27. Institute of Medicine (US) Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes. Choline. In: Dietary Reference Intakes for Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Biotin, and Choline. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 1998. Chapter 12. doi:10.17226/6015
28. Axe J. 10 Signs You Have an Iron Deficiency (How to Boost Iron Naturally). The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2024 (Dr. Axe speaking; segment times from the episode transcript on draxe.com: vitamin C as the strongest enhancer of iron absorption in the 17:58 segment; organ meats as number one, with copper, zinc and folate, in the 24:17 and 24:36 segments; heme iron, the type your body absorbs best, in the 25:01 segment; organ meats, and especially liver, as the number one food for building back iron levels in the 25:23 segment).
29. Hurrell R, Egli I. Iron bioavailability and dietary reference values. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010;91(5):1461S-1467S. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2010.28674F. PMID:20200263
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31. Institute of Medicine (US) Panel on Micronutrients. Copper. In: Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin A, Vitamin K, Arsenic, Boron, Chromium, Copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Molybdenum, Nickel, Silicon, Vanadium, and Zinc. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2001. Chapter 7. doi:10.17226/10026
32. Institute of Medicine (US) Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes. Vitamin B12. In: Dietary Reference Intakes for Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Biotin, and Choline. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 1998. Chapter 9. doi:10.17226/6015
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37. National Health Service (UK). Foods to avoid in pregnancy. nhs.uk
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39. Duizer LM, Diana A, Rathomi HS, Luftimas DE, Rahmannia S, Santi W, et al. An Acceptability Trial of Desiccated Beef Liver and Meat Powder as Potential Fortifiers of Complementary Diets of Young Children in Indonesia. J Food Sci. 2017;82(9):2206-2212. doi:10.1111/1750-3841.13807. PMID:28746725
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48. U.S. National Library of Medicine, DailyMed. Isotretinoin capsules (Aurobindo Pharma Limited): prescribing information, section 7.1 Vitamin A.
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50. Moretti D, van Doorn GM, Swinkels DW, Melse-Boonstra A. Relevance of dietary iron intake and bioavailability in the management of HFE hemochromatosis: a systematic review. Am J Clin Nutr. 2013;98(2):468-79. doi:10.3945/ajcn.112.048264. PMID:23803887
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57. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Spinach, raw. FDC ID 168462. SR Legacy.
58. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Lentils, mature seeds, cooked, boiled, without salt. FDC ID 172421. SR Legacy.
59. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Kale, raw. FDC ID 168421. SR Legacy.
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62. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: SR Legacy, April 2018 release, full download (all foods, per 100 g). Ranks for pan-fried beef liver (FDC ID 168627) counted by DrAxe.com among the foods with a value for each nutrient: vitamin B12, 7th of 7,113; riboflavin, 20th of 7,421; niacin, 87th of 7,402; vitamin B6, 174th of 7,262; folate (DFE), 235th of 6,482; iron, 492nd of 7,713.

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DNM, CNS

Doctor of Natural Medicine · Founder, DrAxe.com

Dr. Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine, clinical nutritionist, and multiple New York Times bestselling author. He has spent 20+ years in clinical practice helping people heal at the root cause and founded one of the most-visited natural-health platforms in the world.

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