Beef Liver for Energy: 8 Science-Backed Reasons It May Help Reduce Fatigue
BEEF LIVER, MICRONUTRIENTS & MITOCHONDRIAL ENERGY — WHAT THE SCIENCE SHOWS
Beef Liver for Energy: 8 Science-Backed Reasons It May Reduce Fatigue
Persistent fatigue is often linked to nutrient deficiencies that impair oxygen transport, mitochondrial function, thyroid health, and brain chemistry. Beef liver is one of the most nutrient-dense foods available and provides key compounds like heme iron, vitamin B12, CoQ10, choline, and retinol that directly support cellular energy production. In this article, I break down eight science-backed reasons beef liver may help improve stamina, mental clarity, and sustained daily energy.
Author
Craig McCloskey
Board-Certified Nutritionist
If you wake up tired, rely on caffeine to get moving, or hit that familiar 1–2 p.m. wall, you’re not imagining it—low energy is one of the most common modern complaints. Sleep, stress, light exposure, and activity levels matter a lot. But a huge, often-missed lever is micronutrient status—the vitamins and minerals your body needs to turn food into usable energy.
That’s where beef liver stands out.
Beef liver is one of the most nutrient-dense foods available. It’s concentrated in nutrients involved in oxygen transport, mitochondrial (cellular) energy production, thyroid signaling, and neurotransmitters—systems that influence how energized (or fatigued) you feel.
Read the full transcript
If you're struggling with daily energy, maybe you struggle to get out of bed in the morning, maybe you hit that 1 or 2 p.m. slump and you're just tired, you can't get through the day, you don't sleep that well. There is a very simple solution that can help you to have more natural energy all without the crash. And that solution is beef liver. Today, I'm going to give you eight reasons that beef liver gives your body more natural energy. energy that you can spend playing with your kids, spending time with your spouse, showing up and do work that you actually love to do. And there's a study that I want to talk about before I jump into these eight reasons that really paints a clear picture why and how beef liver gives you energy. In 1951, there was a study where researchers took three groups of rats. All of these rats were given a pretty standard diet that met all of their nutrient requirements. The first group of rats weren't given anything else other than that diet. The second group of rats were given that diet and additional B vitamins to help energy production. And then that third group of rats, they were given that same diet that the first two groups were given, but they were given beef liver powder. Now that these rats were divided into groups, they were all then placed into water and were forced to swim. And what researchers wanted to find out is how long each one of these groups of rats would swim for on their respective diets. Well, that first group of rats swam for an average of 13.3 minutes. And that second group of rats, given the additional B vitamins, swam for 13.4 minutes. So, pretty negligible. But that third group of rats, given the beef liver powder, swam for 120 minutes before the researchers just pulled them out because it was too long. What is it about beef liver that has these remarkable energy boosting effects? The short answer is that it's a super nutrient-dense food that your ancient biology has a deep ancestral intelligence with. Your body doesn't necessarily know how to take the isolated synthetic nutrients from a random multivitamin. Sententrum, men's one a day, women's one a day. Those are mostly all fake and synthetic nutrients that your body is just going to pee out. Your body doesn't know how to absorb that when it's not really in the whole food form. But beef liver is something that your ancestors have been consuming for thousands upon thousands of generation and your biology literally expects you to get these nutrients in your diet. And so what are these nutrients in beef liver that make it so great for energy production? These are the eight nutrients, the eight ways that beef liver is going to give you great long-asting energy all without the crash. The first one is that beef liver is high in bioavailable heem iron. Beef liver is one of the richest food sources of heem iron in the world that we know about. Getting enough bioavailable iron in your diet each day is essential for producing hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is what transports the oxygen that you breathe in your blood throughout your entire body. That oxygen is then transported to your muscles and other tissues which is going to help with energy production. So, if you're somebody out there that is getting fatigued often, maybe you're a woman and you are going through maybe anemia or you've tested and you have low iron levels, look to consuming more beef liver. This is a very natural way that your body just expects to get more of these nutrients in. Your intelligent ancient biology knows what to do with these nutrients if you just give it the foods that it expects. The second way that beef liver helps you to produce more energy is that it's full of B vitamins. Specifically, vitamin B12 and vitamin B3 nascin. These two B vitamins in particular help convert the food that you eat into ATP. This is a denosine triphosphate. This is the energy currency of your body. Your mitochondria produce all this ATP. It's like the dollar bills. It's the energy currency. That is the energy that you have. The more ATP you produce, the more energy you're going to have. If you are not getting enough B12 in your diet, which bioavailable vitamin B12 only comes from animal foods, more particularly red meat and beef liver, vitamin B12 in particular, helps prevent fatigue and supports red blood cell production, which as we just talked about, red blood cells, if you're getting in enough iron, is going to help move more oxygen throughout your body. A deficiency or a chronically low level in vitamin B12, which is pretty common in today's world, can lead to anemia and low energy production. This is co-enzyme Q10. You might have heard of this nutrient prevalent in heart, maybe beef heart or your own heart, but beef liver is actually a really rich source of CoQ10 as well. CoQ10 is an extremely powerful antioxidant that supports your body's mitochondrial function. And like I just mentioned, mitochondria are kind of like the powerhouses of your cells, virtually in almost every cell of your entire body. And getting enough CoQ10 really enhances ATP production inside of your mitochondria. This is going to help you improve your energy, your stamina, your endurance, not just in your athletics, but living your life just dayto-day. Now, the fourth nutrient that is really beneficial that helps boost energy levels. This is copper. Liver is extremely rich in copper. And this is important because this helps to balance out iron inside the body. You might have heard of iron, hem iron maybe being toxic to the body in high amounts, in excessive amounts. Well, that's because we need to be consuming complimentary nutrients like copper and zinc that help to balance iron in the body. And the beautiful thing about getting in beef liver is that your body knows what to do with this food. It comes in the exact ratios that it expects. So, you might be getting in a ton of iron from beef liver, but because it also contains nutrients like copper and zinc, it's going to be able to balance itself out inside your body. So that's one reason you don't necessarily need to worry about overconumption of iron when eating beef liver because it's also coming with these other bioavailable nutrients that your body can absorb and balance each other out. But if you're taking that random multivitamin that we talked about, they're not coming with these complimentary nutrients that this whole food is. So you could just be absorbing too much copper, too much zinc, too much iron because they're not coming in the exact ratios that this whole food has that your ancient biology expects. The fifth reason that beef liver really helps to boost energy inside your body is that beef liver is full of glutathione and antioxidants. Now, glutathione really is the body's master antioxidant and beef liver is packed full of it. And when you're getting in more glutathione, this helps to reduce oxidative stress in your body, and oxidative stress is an energy killer. This can lead to things like chronic fatigue, just long-term fatigue. So lowering your body's oxidative stress by getting in more glutathione is a great way to boost mitochondrial function and promote more sustained energy throughout your days. Now we have three more reasons that beef liver can really help boost your energy. And the number six reason is that it is a complete protein source. Liver is a complete protein in the fact that it contains all the essential amino acids. Plant proteins aren't complete proteins. Most of the plant proteins other than maybe like pea protein, they all lack certain amino acids that don't make them complete proteins. But beef liver on the other hand, not only is it a complete protein source that contains all the amino acids that are going to help muscle growth and energy production, but these amino acids come in the most bioavailable form possible that your body can actually absorb most of them when you're taking them in when you're eating them. But not only that, eating this complete protein full of these complete amino acids is a great way to help stabilize blood sugar. And keeping your blood sugar levels stable is a great way to prevent energy crashes. Because we've all been there as a kid, I loved Mountain Dew. I would drink Mountain Dew all the time, but I would go up on this big high and then I would crash because I had so much sugar. My blood sugar, my insulin would go through the roof and then I come down and crash. But if you can eat more protein through things like beef liver and other forms of high quality protein sources, that is a great way to keep your blood sugar levels stable through the entire day. Now, the seventh out of eight reason that beef liver is great for boosting energy production, this is that it is an incredible source of preformed vitamin A and this is great for thyroid health. One of the major reasons for low energy in today's culture, especially in women, is low thyroid function. But getting in enough bioavailable vitamin A every single day is a great way to help encourage your body's own thyroid production work a little bit better. Beef liver in particular is rich in preformed vitamin A called retinol. Whereas plant foods like carrots, we've heard that are rich in vitamin A. This is rich in a form of vitamin A called beta carotene. This isn't the most absorbable form of vitamin A. That form beta carotene in plant foods actually needs to get converted inside of our bodies to retinol. And reports have shown that over 80% of that conversion from beta carotene to retinol gets lost in that conversion process. So you're not absorbing as much that you might think is on the nutrition label. But when you're eating a whole food that your biology expects like beef liver, you're absorbing most of that retinol in beef liver. And because your thyroid regulates your metabolism, if your thyroid isn't working that well, then your energy isn't going to be working that well. So getting in more bioavailable vitamin A from beef liver is a way to help support your thyroid levels. Now the last reason that beef liver is a great way to boost your energy levels naturally is that it is a rich source of choline. And choline is super important for brain and nervous system health. Reports have shown that over 90% of individuals are deficient in choline. Choline is almost like a B vitamin. It was just discovered maybe in the 1990s. It's relatively new. So, we didn't have recommendations. We didn't have dietary references on how much we should be getting every day for the longest time. But now, we have a lot more updated science showing that a majority of people aren't getting in enough choline because choline, very bioavailable choline. And to get enough every single day, you would need to eat foods like egg yolks, beef, liver, dairy, and other animal sourced foods because choline doesn't necessarily occur all that predominantly in plant foods. Why is choline important for energy production? Well, choline in beef liver supports the production of acetylcholine. This is a neurotransmitter involved in focus, memory, and muscle activation. It also helps improve mental fatigue and cognitive function. So, if you are not getting in enough choline every day, and a majority, a overwhelming majority of people aren't, you can experience things like brain fog, just run down feeling tired, chronic fatigue, and muscle fatigue. So, you might be wondering how to go about getting more beef liver in your diet. Because you're probably thinking, "It sounds gross. How do you cook it in recipes?" Well, I definitely encourage you to cook it. Fresh is always best. If you can make it in recipes, that's what I always recommend to do, but I get it. Beef liver is not necessarily the most enjoyable food to to cook, to source. How do you even source it? Well, if you can't find it fresh from your local farm, or you don't know how to source high quality beef liver, this is desiccated. This just means freeze-dried to preserve. most all the nutrients. It's never been heated to high temperatures. This beef liver in particular from Ancestral Supplements has come from grass-fed, grass-finish cows raised in wide open New Zealand pastures where they've all been rotationally grazing on regenerative land on organic pastures. Now, the cool thing about this is that it's third-party lab tested. So, that way you're just getting what's on the label. There's nothing nefarious in here. It's been tested to be free of heavy metals, no additives, no added hormones, and no pesticides. The cows are never given vaccines or antibiotics. You can rest assured that this is a completely pure product raised from New Zealand cows. There are more than 28,000 reviews on Amazon talking about the benefits of Ancestral Supplements grass-fed beef liver. Everybody's talking about how it's helped their energy, how it's helped some condition that they've been struggling with, this isn't a miracle cure. But when you give your body whole food that it expects, that is full of nutrition, all these nutrients that I talked about, you can experience incredible things. Because most often chronic disease, you can trace back to some sort of nutrient, vitamin or mineral deficiency. And when you give your body vitamins and minerals that you can actually absorb and your body knows what to do with, you can actually start to feel like a normal functioning, healthy human being again. Guys, if you love this content, be sure to hit that like and subscribe button below. Leave your favorite comment or takeaway in the comment section below. And be sure to send this out to somebody that you know needs to get their hands on some grass-fed beef liver the most. and I'll talk to you next time.
A fascinating endurance study (and what it suggests)
A baseline diet
The same diet plus synthetic B vitamins
The same diet plus whole liver powder
The rats were then placed in water at 20°C and tested for swim endurance. The baseline group swam about 13.3 minutes, the B-vitamin group about 13.4 minutes, while most rats in the liver group swam for over two hours (!) - the test was essentially capped because it ran too long.
Animal data doesn’t automatically equal human outcomes, but the “headline” here is important…
Liver appeared to provide a performance/energy benefit that wasn’t replicated by isolated B vitamins alone.
That fits what we see in nutrition more broadly—energy isn’t usually “one nutrient.” It’s the network. There was seeminly an “X” factor in beef liver that gave these rats the ability to push past their limits.
With that framing, here are eight reasons beef liver may support natural, sustained energy.
1. Heme iron supports oxygen delivery (and fights fatigue)
Iron is essential for making hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen. If iron is low, your tissues get less oxygen—fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, and reduced stamina can follow.
Beef liver is rich in heme iron, the form found in animal foods that’s generally more bioavailable than non-heme iron from plant foods. When oxygen delivery improves, your cells can produce ATP more efficiently, which can translate into better day-to-day energy.
This is especially relevant for people with low iron status (commonly menstruating women, postpartum women, frequent blood donors, endurance athletes, and anyone with poor iron absorption).
2. Vitamin B12 supports red blood cells and energy metabolism
Vitamin B12 is crucial for red blood cell formation and normal neurological function. It’s also involved in pathways that help your body metabolize fats and carbohydrates.
Low B12 status can contribute to anemia-like symptoms and fatigue. Beef liver is one of the most concentrated food sources of B12, making it a powerful option for people who eat little red meat—or those who struggle to maintain healthy levels.
B vitamins act like “spark plugs” for metabolism. They serve as cofactors in the biochemical steps your mitochondria use to convert food into ATP. When B-vitamin status is low (or when demand is high due to stress, hard training, or poor diet), energy output can feel sluggish.
Liver naturally supplies multiple B vitamins together—more like a “full system” support than a single isolated nutrient.
3. CoQ10 supports mitochondrial performance
Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is part of the mitochondrial machinery that helps generate ATP. It also functions as an antioxidant in cell membranes.
While CoQ10 is often associated with heart tissue, beef liver contains CoQ10 too—and it fits the energy theme because mitochondria are the “power plants” of your cells. Supporting mitochondrial function is one of the most direct nutritional angles for improving stamina, endurance, and resilience.
4. Copper helps balance iron and supports iron metabolism
Copper doesn’t get as much attention as iron, but it matters for energy—especially because it interacts with iron metabolism. Copper-dependent enzymes help mobilize iron and support normal red blood cell function.
One reason liver is unique is that it naturally contains iron alongside copper. That nutrient pairing matters because the body uses mineral networks, not isolated single inputs.
This is also why many people do better emphasizing food-based iron instead of high-dose iron supplements (unless medically indicated), especially if they’re not accounting for cofactors like copper.
5. Glutathione and antioxidants may reduce oxidative stress (an energy drain)
Oxidative stress can impair mitochondrial efficiency. When your cells are fighting high oxidative load, energy production tends to become less efficient—many people experience that as “tired but wired,” chronic fatigue, or reduced exercise tolerance.
Liver contains glutathione, often called the body’s “master antioxidant,” plus nutrients that support the antioxidant system. Reducing oxidative stress can support more efficient ATP production and more stable day-long energy.
6. Complete protein supports steady blood sugar (and fewer crashes)
Beef liver provides complete protein, meaning it contains all essential amino acids. Protein supports energy in two big ways:
Blood sugar stability: Protein slows digestion and reduces the “spike and crash” effect many people feel after refined carbs alone. More stable blood sugar often equals more stable energy.
Tissue repair and metabolic function: Amino acids are needed for enzymes, neurotransmitters, and muscle maintenance—all relevant for how energized you feel.
This is one reason higher-protein meals often feel like “clean energy,” especially compared to high-sugar or ultra-processed snacks.
7. Preformed vitamin A (retinol) supports thyroid-driven metabolism
Beef liver is rich in preformed vitamin A (retinol)—the active form your body can use directly. Many plant foods contain provitamin A carotenoids (like beta-carotene), but conversion to retinol varies widely between individuals and can be inefficient depending on genetics, gut function, and dietary context.
If someone has low thyroid function (or borderline low function), optimizing nutrients involved in thyroid signaling and metabolism—like vitamin A—can be part of a broader plan.
8. Choline supports brain energy, focus, and neurotransmitters (acetylcholine)
Choline supports production of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in focus, memory, and muscle activation. It also supports liver function and cell membranes.
Beef liver is one of the most concentrated food sources of choline—along with egg yolks—so it’s a practical option for supporting cognitive clarity and reducing that “brain fog” feeling that often gets lumped under “low energy.”
How to actually use beef liver (without overdoing it)
Because liver is so concentrated, small amounts go a long way.
A common “food-first” approach is 1–2 ounces once or twice per week, mixed into ground beef, meatballs, chili, or pâté.
If you truly can’t do the taste/texture, desiccated (freeze-dried) liver capsules are a popular alternative. The biggest quality markers to look for are sourcing transparency and third-party testing.
One brand I personally trust is Ancestral Supplements Grass-Fed Beef Liver.
Grass-finished & finished
Regenerative pastures in New Zealand
Freeze-dried to preserve nutrients without high-heat processing
Third-party tested for purity and heavy metals
If you want a convenient way to add liver nutrients to your routine without cooking it yourself, you can use code CRAIG to save 15% off your first order.
Bottom line
Beef liver isn’t a “magic” food—but it is an unusually powerful nutritional tool. It contains a dense package of nutrients tied to real human energy systems: oxygen transport (heme iron), cellular energy metabolism (B vitamins, CoQ10), mineral balance (copper), oxidative stress control (glutathione), blood sugar stability (protein), thyroid-driven metabolism (retinol), and brain function (choline/acetylcholine).
For many people, improving energy isn’t about another stimulant. It’s about rebuilding the foundation—nutrients your body actually uses to generate energy in the first place.
