Freeze-Dried vs Desiccated Liver: What's the Difference?

Shop for liver capsules and you'll see two words on almost every label: freeze dried and desiccated. They sound like two different things. They're not quite, and the difference that actually matters is hiding behind them.

The short answer

Desiccated just means dried. It tells you the water is gone, but not how it was taken out. Freeze drying is one way of drying, and it's the gentlest one. So all freeze dried liver is desiccated, but not all desiccated liver is freeze dried.

The two questions worth asking about any liver supplement are how it was dried, and whether the fat was taken out.

How liver gets dried

Fresh liver is about 71% water. To turn it into a powder you can put in a capsule, that water has to go. There are two main ways to do it.

• Heat or air drying. The liver is dried with warm air until the water evaporates. It's faster and cheaper, but the liver sits in heat for a long time.
• Freeze drying. The liver is frozen first, then put under a vacuum so the frozen water turns straight into vapour without ever melting. It happens at low temperatures, so the liver is never cooked.

Why heat matters

Some of the nutrients liver is known for don't like heat, and folate is one of the most sensitive. A 2020 study in the journal Foods cooked chicken liver in different ways and measured what was left. Gentle steaming and low temperature cooking kept almost all of the folate. Thirty minutes of hot air at 180 °C lost about 42% of it. The researchers found that time in the heat mattered more than the temperature itself.

That study was about cooking, not making supplements, and nobody has published a head to head test of freeze dried versus heat dried liver powder that we could find. But the principle is the same: the less heat and the less time, the more of the liver you keep. That's why we freeze dry.

The bigger question: was the fat taken out?

Some liver supplements are defatted, meaning the fat is removed before or after drying. Fat can go rancid, so removing it makes the powder keep longer, and a lot of older desiccated liver tablets were made this way.

The catch is that vitamin A is fat soluble. Liver stores it as retinol, the ready to use form, inside tiny droplets of fat. Taking the fat out can take some of that with it. Look for the words "non defatted" or "not defatted" on the label. If a brand doesn't say, ask.

How to read a liver supplement label

• How was it dried? A good brand names the method. "Desiccated" on its own doesn't tell you.
• Is it defatted? You want non defatted.
• Where is it from, and how were the animals raised? Look for grass fed and grass finished.
• Is anything else in the capsule? Fillers and flow agents are there to help the machine, not you.
• Are the lab results posted? Every batch should be tested for heavy metals and microbials, and you should be able to see the results.
• How much fresh liver is in a serving? A brand that tells you this is being straight with you about the dose.

What we do

LiveRestore is grass fed and finished beef liver from Argentina, freeze dried and not defatted, in a bovine gelatin capsule with nothing else added. Four capsules are 3,000 mg of liver, from about 10 g of fresh liver. Every batch is lab tested for heavy metals and microbials, and the results are on the product page.

Organyze is made the same way, with heart, kidney, spleen and pancreas added to the liver.

Want the full numbers? See what's in a serving of LiveRestore, or where our ingredients come from.

Still have a question?

Email marco@nutrimal.co. You can also see everything we make at a glance on our Nutrimal at a Glance page.

Sources

• Czarnowska-Kujawska M, Draszanowska A, Gujska E. Effect of Different Cooking Methods on Folate Content in Chicken Liver. Foods, 2020; 9(10):1431.
• USDA FoodData Central, beef, variety meats and by-products, liver, raw (FDC 169451), for water content.