Recently, the Daily Mail (who are known for their accurate portrayal of all things health and wellness) shared an article claiming that bone broth was the new 'miracle health fad' which caused their reporter to lose 10 pounds in three weeks Throughout their rigorously researched article, they asked questions such as 'is bone broth the new coffee? ' (Answer: no, it literally tastes nothing it like it) and marvelled at the results (only pausing to mention that the writer actually didn't appear to eat much else while drinking her broth other than a '7pm snack'; making the 10 pound weight lost almost inevitable). But, I do believe bone broth can be amazing for you- and today I wanted to share some of the many actual benefits of bone broth and explain how to introduce it into your diet.
1. It's an easy way to get grass-fed meat into your diet. We are always hearing about the benefits of grass-fed meat, but many people with gut problems find it difficult to digest red meat due to the high fat content (red meat is one of the slowest foods to break down in your body; taking up to 12 hours.). Therefore drinking bone broth is much easier to digest and still gives you much of the goodness. Beef bone broth in particular is excellent for helping with low iron stores.
2. It is extremely nutrient dense. This means it packs a whole heap of nutrients in liquid form; and the fat content is suprisingly low (less than 2.5g per 100g). It is perfect if you are resting your gut temporarily on a liquid diet as there is the nutrients are readily absorbable (since there is so little to break down)
3. It helps repair the gut. Bone broth is jam-packed full of the amino acid- L-Glutamine and gelatin. I mentioned this in my blog about introducing sauerkraut into your diet. L-Glutamine helps with repair muscles and healing gut tissue. The GAPS diet, which focus on repairing the gut, focuses on introducing bone broth in your diet to aid healing. As I've mentioned before, so many things are linked to the gut so it may also help with autoimmune disease or skin complaints.
4. It helps with joint pain. Both collagen and gelatin support the body in healthy joints.
5. It leads to glowing skin thanks to plenty of collagen (who needs expensive beauty products!)
6. It replaces electrolytes into the body- making it a much healthier alternative to energy drinks or dioralyte sachets when you are experiencing flare ups or low energy (another tip: coconut water does this too and it's so much better for you than Lucozade!)
How to use it
Making bone broth isn't difficult to do- it's simply a case of slow cooking a ton of organic meat bones (along with some vegetables, water and apple cider vinegar) for at least 24 hours. There are lots of tutorials online about how to do this.However, sometimes it can be difficult to source enough high quality bones to make a decent quality of broth. Luckily, you can buy premade bone broth (made with organic beef/chicken bones) online. One of the cheapest and most readily available is Ossa-who offer a choices of chicken, fish or beef bone broth and costs £4.99 from Ocado.
Introduce bone broth slowly. Although in essence it is an easy to digest food, any new food in large quantites can upset the stomach. The chicken broth is the easiest to digest so begin with 1/2 cup of that and take with food initially. After the first few days, increase to 1 cup on an empty stomach (this will aid nutrient absorption.)
Be aware that like any food that helps with gut health you may experience minor digestive disturbances due to bacterial die off.
I hope this guide to the actual benefits of bone-broth. Bone broth is not a fad, a weight-loss cure or a coffee replacement: Instead it is an extremely nutritious food that can have many benefits to those with all kinds of gut problems.