Why are Gallbladders Blue?

I was reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and stopped suddenly on page 234 because I found an error that reminds me of an important fact of nature.  Everywhere you look in the natural world, there are clues about wise and poor food choices.


Pollan is a good writer, and he did a lot of fun, get-out-of-the-city research for this book, including processing chickens and hunting for the first time in order to write this book.  However... Pollan says the gallbladder is a dull mustard. It is not. The gizzard is dull mustard on the rough side you want to peel off (after cleaning out the grit). Nothing in the gizzard will make you sick. Nothing in the heart, lungs or any other internal organ will make you sick.


But the gallbladder will, and it is too strange a blue-green to be missed.


The first time I processed a chicken, I stopped at the liver, looking at the attached gallbladder in amazement.  I was thinking of insects that use color to signal poison - or at least a bitter taste - to potential predators. The gallbladder's bright prussian blue in a cavity filled with rusty red and mustard yellow is the same type of warning. Moreover, it is easily pinched off from the liver, which is nutritious and good to eat.


My mother once used the word atavistic to describe my attitude towards food; I am the first in generations of our family to think like a native. Atavistic is usually a negative term, but I find great joy in my little epiphanies.


Today, tomorrow and every day for the rest of your lives, maybe you can also begin to see what a native might see, right in your own neighborhood.


Have you ever smelled a rose in an apple? Noticed hawthornes look like infant crabapples or rose pits? Noticed how similar the bark, flowers, leaves and flesh are of apples and pears? They are all related. The season for good tree fruit is long over, but the next time you are at a farm stand with fresh picked apples, pick one and try to smell and taste the rose.


If you see a weed that looks remarkably like a commercial food plant, pick a leaf and a flower (if one is available) and look it up online. (Sometimes weeds that don't look like food plants are quite edible; my favorites are miner's lettuce and young sorrel leaves. Sometimes things that do look like food plants - especially white mushrooms - can make you very sick. Looking up all new plants before you taste is prudent.)


When do wild animals like seeds best? Either when they are new and fat, filled with nourishing oils, or after they have sprouted. Seeds naturally have an "anti-nutrient" to them to keep them from decaying until the next viable season, when they will sprout. Until then, they are hard to digest - by natural plan. Fermentation leads to decomposition when conditions are poor to a plant, but to sprouting under ideal conditions. After sprouting, seeds are not only easy to digest, but extra nutritious.  (Pollan says Joel Salatin's pigs are interested in the grain alcohol in fermenting corn, but they may be just as interested in the nutrients, including sugars and vitamin C.)


There are thousands of such questions you can ask once you begin to think as nature designed us - human opportunists - to think. The blue gallbladder is merely a beginning.