I’d rather be a vegetarian … no one cares if you cook them alive [sadistic laugh].
I think these “American” attitudes toward organ meats are probably largely a combination of regional and situational; many urban Americans have no idea how to prepare organ meats (hell, a lot of Americans can barely cook) but will happily eat the three or four different kinds of liver pate sold at Whole Foods, or order tongue at a French restaurant, or eat pho with soft tendon and tripe at a Vietnamese restaurant.
Many of the dwindling population of rural Americans know how to prepare (and happily consume) liver, heart, kidneys, chitlins, etc.
The only organ meat I rarely see eaten, and always wonder why, is lung. The few times I have had lung it has been exceptionally delicious.
Breath taking, isn’t it?
Howdy Doody?
I suspect I’m wasting my keystrokes trying to give an honest reply to the OP, but I (not an American, but an Australia) despise offal and think less of the people I know who actively eat it.
To me, it’s a terribly uncivilised food - the sort of thing I imagine cavemen eating 10,000 years ago because you could just rip out a mammoth’s innards, throw them on the fire, then go om nom nom Thag like. There’s just something wrong, IMHO, about eating brains (no Zombie jokes, please!), hearts, livers, kidneys etc. Blech. I feel queasy even thinking about the fact people do this.
Interesting, what exactly do you mean by think less of them?
Does the same feeling apply to, say, a person ordering an expensive plate of pate du foie gras with a blackberry confit?
Are there other foods you consider uncivilized outside of offal? Raw fish? Raw beef? Oysters? Crustaceans? Insects? Foraged plants? Milk fresh from a cow?
Also, what do you consider offal? Short rib? Oxtail? Beef Cheek? Bacon rind? Chicken skin? Beef tongue? Bone marrow?
I think they’re a bit gross, basically.
It would depend on the context. I’m not especially fond of pate (as in, I think it’s gross and don’t eat it) because of its liver origins, though.
Milk fresh from a cow I’d call “dangerous” or “hippy” for anyone who doesn’t live on a farm. Foraged plants and raw beef would depend on context. Insects are gross from a food perspective in Anglo culture and I’d think anyone Anglo professing to like them was likely and at best a hipster showing off how multicultural they were. Raw fish is fine in Sushi and oysters and crustaceans are fine generally.
All of the above except short/thin rib. Personally, I don’t like my (food) meat having bones attached to it. However, while I won’t eat it, I don’t think less of people eating a T-bone steak or pork ribs.
I got dibs on his foie gras, marrow and hearts!
Brains are offal?
I do like me a good brains, chorizo, potato, and egg breakfast burrito. Add a cup or small bowl of menudo and I’m reliving my childhood, yum!
Damn, I guess I’m racist after all…
Absolutely. All organ meats, plus often people will throw in oxtail, pig’s trotters, tongue, and stuff like that into the general definition of “offal.”
It features big in a lot of Thai food here, but I’ll bet you’d be hard-pressed to find it in that trendy Thai restaurant in any US city. I won’t eat the stuff myself.
I think you might be surprised. You can find Thai restaurants serving worms and ant eggs here in Chicago, so offal isn’t much a problem. And that’s on the English menu. Some of these places have a semi-secret “Thai” menu, too, that features other oddball bits of all sorts of animals.
vomit smiley
Each region of Thailand has its own particular major health problem. In the Northeast, it’s liver fluke, caused by eating shit like that. Swimming in infected waters too but mostly from eating raw meat and offal. They eat this horrible stuff called pla ra, which is a fermented raw fish dish. Imagine you licked all the inside walls of a decade-old dumpster out behind a greasy-spoon diner, then puked your guts up. I can imagine it would look and smell similar to pla ra.
Yeah, you can find pla ra, here too, although I’ve only seen it at a restaurant that specializes in Northern Thai food. I believe it was in the green papaya salad. There’s a good number of cultures that do the fermented fish thing. (And isn’t fish sauce made from fermenting fish, anyway?) Some of it is more pungent than others. Swedish surströmming I’ve found to be quite pungent.
I will not eat offal of any kind. The only offal that ever came into our house was liver and only because my mother liked it (and because she was anemic - I’d rather eat kidney beans). She never made us eat it. I used to cook it for her and tried it a few times. It tastes like dust.
As for other types of offal, by the time I had the opportunity to try any of them, I had already had too many anatomy classes and had worked in a necropsy lab. Seeing these organs in situ and diseased definitely takes away any of their potential appeal as food.
I will not eat fish with the heads on but I wont eat fish without the head on either. 
“God, that’s good…!” 
I have mixed feelings on this topic. I suppose it depends on what is going to be classified as offal. When ever the farmer’s bar-restaurant where I have lunch offers liver and onions I order it. Not overcooked and sliced thin that is just good eats and the food of my childhood. My father loved steak and kidney pie. The local butcher gave beef kidneys away as “a treat for the cat.” For years Dad was the family cat. The recollection of kidneys rinsing in a bucket of water on the back porch and the urine smell that ensued is not a pleasant childhood memory. Years ago in Normandy I ordered the only thing on the menu of a country café that I could understand and ended up with a plate of pork tripe --greasy, white and shimmering. I did not eat it. So if I eat liver, avoid kidneys and abominate tripe where does that put me on the scale of racist gastronomy?
By my calculations, you clock in at about .08 milihitlers.
I seriously doubt the name is doing it any favors.
I just want to link to the definition of offal in a random online dictionary. I have always thought that the word offal meant “the inedible parts of an animal that are thrown out during the process of butchering.” 6 of the 7 definitions of offal on this page match that or “refuse, rubbish.” Only one definition is that of edible food. I didn’t even know that edible organs were ever called offal. If someone said that they were serving offal, I would probably puke on the spot. I have always called it organ meat, and rarely ate any of it. So, my ignorance was definitely fought by this thread, although I doubt I will eat it, anyway.