My grandma, too. Married into a German farm family. They raised a lot of hogs and ate everything but the squeal. As a little girl, my mom’s job on butchering day was to pick blood vessels out of the pig brains before they were fried up. Can you imagine — cholesterol, breaded and deep-fried. Grandma started drinking black coffee almost before she could walk. Died young at 97.
It is possible her living to 97 was from eating organ meat.
But I hope not, because it sounds revolting.
My mom grew up in a little rural town that was overwhelmingly Czech immigrants or first-generation American children of same, and I think those vessels were one of the delicacies she recalls being squeamish about (along with headcheese and pickled chicken feet).
My 99-yo grandmother was a widow whose husband passed away in his 50s; he probably ate little different than she did but I think we have genetic predispositions for susceptibility. Still, it just seems like when I was little, there were a LOT of old people (really old, not just my perception of them) who ate the sausage, the bacon, the lard, etc and washed it down with plenty of alcohol, yet they somehow survived. One of our neighbors smoked cigarettes into his late 80s and would probably have smoked into his 90s if he hadn't fallen off a roof while laying shingles and gotten an infection in the hospital. I guess if tetanus, rupture and being thrown from a horse (or a roof!) didn't get you, you stood a good chance of hanging around despite what "settled science" thought/thinks.