VanHouten - It Takes Guts: A Meat-Eaters Guide to Eating Offal with over 75 Healthy and Delicious Nose-to-Tail Recipes

FOREWORD

I will never forget meeting Ashleigh VanHouten. I have spent over a decade in the fitness and wellness space, and to this day it is dominated by male figures in leadership positions. It was nice to meet a woman who brought the same strength and charisma, and who can hold her own simply being who she is.

We met at an event in which she was interviewing other experts in the wellness field. Ashleigh was part of a team of two other guys, and within fifteen minutes, it felt like we were old friends, and indeed we would become that.

There is a lot I admire about The Muscle Maven. Frankly, she is one of a kind with an extremely adventurous spirit, which can easily be seen in the pages of this book. Ashleigh does an incredible job at taking foods often thought of as taboo and intimidating (at least in some parts of modern Western culture) and making them palatable and enjoyable for the mainstream, while also helping us understand the nutritional aspects to these choices.

The value of this cookbook does not stop at the novelty of eating things that are outside of our comfort zone. What is provided here is a road map to the most nutrient-dense and prized food of our ancestors. In the following pages, you will find some of the worlds original superfoods.

Protein in all animal-based forms is the most essential macronutrientand yet deeply controversial, because this food source has a face. As such, it is often the most overlooked macronutrient, and often the proverbial black sheep. Well, it is time to eat the sheepall of it.

In todays world, we are up against the clock, domestication, and inactivity combined with diseases of aging that run the gamut of insulin resistance, obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and even dementia. During my seven years of training in nutritional science (which included a two-year combined research/clinical fellowship at Washington University in geriatrics/obesity medicine and nutritional science), as well as my previous medical training and continued mentorship with one of the world-leading protein experts, the concept of Muscle-Centric Medicine was born. This is the concept that we are not over-fat, but rather under-muscled. I bring this up because on a fundamental level, dietary protein is the solution to these diseases of aging, yet we are up against a narrative of eating more plants and reducing animal protein as both the healthier and more moral choice. This is the single worst piece of advice Ive seen as a clinician; the solution is to find more creative and sustainable ways to include all parts of the animal, and Ashleigh has done that here.

Protein is necessary for healthy, youthful muscle. Muscle is important in metabolic regulation; in fact, it determines a large part of your resting metabolic rate and is your metabolic currency. By optimizing muscle tissue through dietary protein, one can optimize the organ of longevity, which is muscle.

For the longest time, when I thought of protein, I only thought of the meat. I will never forget when Ashleigh took me to a restaurant in New York City where they served a true nose-to-tail selection. Naturally, my husband, who is a ten-year Navy SEAL with multiple deployments under his belt, turned to me and said, Honey, other cultures eat way more than the meat. So of course, I ordered from the menu what seemed to be the safest: sweetbreads. It turns out that sweetbreads are actually pancreas and thymus, and while I initially tried to pretend they were anything but, this denial only lasted for the first bite. After that, I was sold.