Bone Broth – The trendiest beverage of the last 5 years!
If you haven’t introduced this ancient nutritious food into your diet, then you should consider it. Bone broth or ‘stock’ isn’t any new fad. It’s the revival of a highly healthy food that has been consumed for generations as an easy to digest, nutrient dense drink. If you want benefits like better skin, fascia and hair, healthier digestive function, reduced pain, and increased immune health, then jump onto the bone broth bandwagon.
As humans have moved away from hunting and gathering, we tend to no longer cherish the nutritious organ meats, or the goodness from bone marrow like we used to. These days the modern diet often relies of certain cuts of muscle meat, and we no longer nibble on bones, or cook the whole animal like we used to. Eating offal like brain, liver, feet or tendons might be a little too much to stomach for many of us who are used to merely eating muscle meats. Bone broth is perhaps a less confronting way to help get more goodness out of your meat, and reduce waste to enable you to use every part of the animal.
As bones, marrow, ligaments, tendons etc, are cooked at a low heat, healing compounds like collagen, gelatin and amino acids like glycine, glutamine or proline, and minerals like calcium, magnesium, sulphur are released. The resulting broth is one of the most nutrient dense foods you can consume, and it’s a readily usable food our body can digest proficiently. Many people are lacking in these vital nutrients, and eating bone broth is a great solution for overall health, metabolism and digestion.
A lack of good quality collagen in your diet can increase the degradation of your own collagen. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, much of it in your skin, joints and fascia. If your fascial system isn’t as strong, and you are more susceptible to cellulite (fat penetrates weak collagen), joint pain and injury, general stiffness, lack of strength, flexibility and range of motion, and saggy, wrinkled skin.
A lack of good amino acids in your diet can negatively impact brain health often shifting us towards anxiety, depression, or even simply feeling wired and tired and struggling to recover and sleep well. Amino acids are crucial for detoxification, and without them we cannot process waste efficiently, meaning it ends up getting recirculated, rather than excreted.
Reasons you should try it
It’s cheap to make
You get more value out of your meat
It’s easy to make
It can be stored in the freezer
It’s easy on digestion and helps heal the gut lining
It’s a wonderful snack that won’t spike blood sugar
It’s healing – it heals and seals the gut and increases immune health
It will help improve the quality of the collagen in your body – think joints, fascia, skin, hair, etc.
It’s packed full of easily digestible nutrients and minerals.
It will make you full
It’s a convenient ‘go-to’ snack
It calms the nervous system
It's anti-inflammatory
Taken before bed it assists sleep
supports healthy detoxification processes
Stock vs Bone Broth
Stock is usually cooked at a high heat, for a shorter duration of time to produce a more watery liquid that lacks many of the nutrients in bone broth. Bone broth is cooked for 4-24 hours (or longer) at a lower temperature to release minerals and nutrients, and forms a more gelatinous broth, and stronger flavour.
Tips & Tricks
If you decide to make your own make sure your meat or bones comes from grass fed animals. A grass fed, organic piece of meat will offer nutrient dense product, but a chemical and hormone laden, non organic meat may leech these chemicals, hormones and more (heavy metals) into your broth. The extended cooking time allows for a greater release of nutrrients, but alson of chemicals, so it's best to source the best quality meat or bones you can afford.
Dosage
When adding bone broth into your routine, go easy and don’t pour yourself a super-sized mug as you may not be used to digesting the fats in broth. When people try bone broth for the first time in large amounts, they often feel nauseous and experience digestive upset, so take it easy. Small amounts are all that is needed due to the high nutrition density of bone broth. In terms of dosage you can go from a cup a day, all the way up to a bone broth fast where all you eat is broth to boost immunity and reduce inflammation.You can also use it to flavour dishes with.
To help with digestion you could try supplementing with Ox bile salts, or Hydrochloric acid (HCL) which may make the transition easier. If you want to know how to make it, click here for our recipes for chicken, beef and chicken feet broth. You can’t go wrong adding bone broth into your wellness plan, your body will thank you!
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