The chicken's heart and gizzard are packaged together with the liver and sold as the giblets. Hearts and gizzards are commonly added to stuffing or used to flavor gravy, but they're also served fried or pickled and in curries, soups and stews. They're a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals, but if you're watching your cholesterol intake, you'll want to avoid them because they're high in cholesterol.
Definition
The definition of a chicken heart is straight-forward, but what part of the body the gizzard comes from is not so obvious. The gizzard is a muscular pouch found in the lower stomach of most birds that grinds up food. Because birds don't have teeth, they rely on the gizzard to mash the food they eat. The nutrition values in this article are for a 1 oz. portion size for both hearts and gizzards.
Calories, Fat and Protein
A 1 oz. serving of chicken hearts has 43 calories compared with only 26 calories in the same serving size of gizzards, but they both provide 9 to 10 percent of the recommended daily value of protein. The heart is also higher in fat content, having 4 percent of the daily value (DV) compared with only 1 percent in the gizzard.
Vitamins
The heart and gizzard both provide all the B vitamins, but chicken hearts are a better source of riboflavin, folate, vitamin B12 and pantothenic acid. Hearts are a great source of vitamin B12, providing 34 percent DV compared with gizzards' 6 percent. Hearts also provide 12 percent DV of riboflavin, 7 percent of pantothenic acid, and 5 percent of vitamin B6 and folate compared with the gizzard's 4 percent DV of riboflavin, 2 percent of pantothenic acid, 2 percent of vitamin B6 and zero percent for folate. They supply almost equal amounts of thiamine (1 to 3 percent DV) and niacin (5 to 7 percent DV).
Minerals
Chicken hearts and gizzards are a decent source of zinc (12 percent and 5 percent DV respectively), selenium (2 percent and 10 percent DV) and iron (9 percent and 4 percent DV). They provide 1 to 4 percent of the daily value of magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, copper and manganese.
Considerations
They both provide a small amount of the heart-healthy omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, but the type of fat that is most predominant is cholesterol. A 1 oz. serving of chicken hearts supplies 13 percent of the recommended daily value of cholesterol, and gizzards provide an even larger 22 percent DV.
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