Beef Heart and CoQ10: What a Supplement Actually Delivers

Beef heart is among the richest food sources of CoQ10, at roughly 11 to 19 mg per 100 grams fresh. A 100 mg capsule of dried heart holds under a tenth of a milligram: a sliver of a day’s intake, nowhere near a supplement dose.

This page is one of the organ-by-organ satellites of our complete guide to beef organ supplements for women. Heart is the organ every formula lists and almost none quantifies, so this article does the arithmetic the category leaves out — with USDA and published figures, and the result printed even where it does not flatter a capsule.

What is beef heart, nutritionally?

Beef heart is muscle, and its nutrient profile is far closer to lean steak than to liver. Per 100 grams raw, USDA lists 18.5 g of protein, 3.4 g of fat, 4.38 mg of iron, 10.8 mcg of vitamin B12 and only 10 mcg of vitamin A — against 4,970 mcg in the same weight of beef liver. That last gap is the most useful fact on this page.

The figures come from the USDA entry for New Zealand beef heart, the same origin as the organs in our own formula. On iron, heart sits with liver and kidney in the 4 to 5 mg band — the organ that actually stands out on iron is spleen, as we showed in do beef organ supplements help with iron. Heart’s distinction is not a vitamin or a mineral. It is a molecule the USDA table does not track.

How much CoQ10 is in beef heart?

Published analyses put beef heart at 113 to 192 micrograms of CoQ10 per gram of fresh tissue — 11.3 to 19.2 mg per 100 grams — which makes it one of the richest food sources measured. For scale, the average diet supplies only 3 to 6 mg of CoQ10 across an entire day. One hundred grams of heart out-delivers a whole day of everything else.

The range comes from Japanese and Finnish food-composition surveys cited in a 2024 review of edible offal; the daily-intake figure is from a 2010 review of CoQ10 in foods. Two caveats apply. Content varies widely between animals and countries of origin, hence the range. And cooking costs some of it: the Danish diet study behind those figures (PubMed 9129255) measured a 14 to 32 percent loss from frying and none from boiling. Nobody has published a retention figure for freeze-dried organ powder, so we do not quote one.

What does CoQ10 actually do?

Coenzyme Q10 is a fat-soluble molecule made inside every cell, where it carries electrons in the mitochondrial chain that produces cellular energy and acts as an antioxidant in cell membranes.* The body makes most of what it uses; only about 5 mg a day comes from food. That is why it is a coenzyme rather than a vitamin — not, strictly, something you must eat.

A 2020 overview of human CoQ10 metabolism puts the estimated daily requirement around 500 mg, almost all synthesized internally, and notes that production peaks around age 25 and is roughly half that level by 65. Certain prescription drugs, statins in particular, reduce it further. Those are the facts that sell beef heart capsules. What they do not establish is that a small food dose changes anything in a person whose own synthesis is working — no trial has tested a beef heart capsule for that.

How much CoQ10 does a beef heart capsule deliver?

By arithmetic, a 100 mg serving of freeze-dried beef heart — the amount on the Women Bloom panel — represents about 0.46 g of fresh heart, which at the published range holds 0.05 to 0.09 mg of CoQ10. That is one to three percent of an ordinary day’s dietary intake, and roughly a thousandth of a 100 mg CoQ10 capsule. We do not measure CoQ10 in our finished product, so treat this as an estimate, not a label figure.

The working is short enough to check. USDA gives raw heart as 78.1 percent water, so 100 mg of dried powder began as about 457 mg of tissue. Multiply by 113 to 192 micrograms per gram and you get 52 to 88 micrograms — assuming drying loses none of it, the most generous assumption available. To take in 100 mg of CoQ10 from fresh heart you would need to eat roughly 520 to 885 grams of it. The supplement trials listed in the 2020 overview used 100 to 300 mg a day. A two-capsule serving of any organ supplement built on a comparable heart dose is not in that conversation, ours included.

What about the other nutrients in the same 100 mg?

The same arithmetic applies. Beef heart’s 10.8 mcg of B12 per 100 g becomes about 0.05 mcg in a 100 mg serving — two percent of the 2.4 mcg the NIH recommends for adult women — and its 4.38 mg of iron becomes about 0.02 mg. A capsule is a food dose of the organ, not a nutrient dose, whatever the label implies.

What if you take a statin?

Statins are the prescription drugs most associated with lowered CoQ10 levels, and that is a conversation to have with your physician about a measured dose — not something a beef heart capsule addresses. At a fraction of a milligram per serving, an organ supplement is not a CoQ10 supplement and should not be taken as one. We would rather say that plainly than let the word “CoQ10” on an ingredient list do the implying.

The same 2020 overview notes the limits of CoQ10 absorption and bioavailability. Products built for that purpose declare a dose in milligrams and, often, the form; a food-form organ capsule declares neither, because it cannot. Who should think twice about organ supplements in general — including anyone on prescription medication — is covered in beef organ supplement side effects.

Why is beef heart in a women’s formula, then?

Because it adds organ tissue without adding preformed vitamin A. In a formula that already carries 150 mg of liver, heart is the organ you can include at 100 mg without pushing retinol, which is the nutrient that sets the ceiling on how much liver a women’s supplement — or a pregnancy — can accommodate. That is a formulation reason, and we would rather give you the real one than a borrowed one.

The borrowed one is tradition: the idea that eating an organ supports the same organ in you. It is old, widely repeated, and has no controlled trial behind it for any organ. What can be said about heart is factual and modest. It is a lean, freeze-dried muscle tissue with a food-form spread of B vitamins, iron, zinc and selenium; it is the only common food with a CoQ10 content worth measuring; and its retinol content is negligible, which matters if you already eat liver or are reading can you take beef organ supplements while pregnant. Why liver is the organ that carries the vitamin A load is the subject of beef liver benefits for women.

What we publish, and what we do not

The heart in our formula is 100 mg per two-capsule serving, printed in text with every other dose on the Supplement Facts page; the finished-product certificate for the current lot is on the Lab Tests page. Neither lists a CoQ10 content, because we have not tested for it, and we will not print a number we have not measured. If a label in this category states a CoQ10 figure for its heart, ask which lot it was measured on.

The short version

Beef heart is a lean muscle organ — 18.5 g of protein, 4.38 mg of iron and 10.8 mcg of B12 per 100 g raw, and almost no preformed vitamin A — and among the richest food sources of CoQ10, at 11.3 to 19.2 mg per 100 g against 3 to 6 mg in a whole day’s diet. Your body makes most of its own CoQ10, output falls with age, and statins lower it. A 100 mg capsule of dried heart holds an estimated 0.05 to 0.09 mg, about a thousandth of a supplement dose, so it is not a CoQ10 supplement and we do not sell it as one. In Women Bloom, heart is 100 mg of New Zealand grass-fed organ tissue that adds to the formula without adding retinol — printed with the dose.

Last reviewed: 9 September 2026. This article is general information, not medical advice. Talk to your physician or a registered dietitian before starting any supplement, particularly if you take prescription medication.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.