Bone Broth – The Elixir of Life

For our early ancestors, throwing away parts of the animals they hunted was out of the question. Picture the scene: a load of hunter gatherers hovering around a fire, feeling squeamish and  throwing away the ‘nasty parts’ of the animal they had spent days hunting and saving the best bits to knock up a beef wellington with. One ancestor scraping away the highly nutritious organ meat into the trash whilst another lines up their chateaubriand for a quick instagram picture. Could modern cooking methods and attitudes dictate a wasteful approach to eating? Do we disregard for the less glamorous (yet highly nutritious) animal products. Cooking methods clearly got more advanced, from fires and hot rocks to saucepans and pressure cookers, food scarcity dropped and our relationship to eating has drastically changed. It is debated that it is important to realign our eating style to that of our ancestors – Paleo fans would agree, as our ancestors were not prancing about eating big macs, big gulps or big handfuls of popcorn. 

Something that is very commonly in my kitchen is bone broth: a tip of the hat to our ancestral artisans that yields a delicious, versatile and extremely nutritious product that offers a plethora of health benefits. Honestly, based on its impressive nutritional profile, I would make and drink this daily even if It tasted like garbage. Luckily it IS delicious and as well as a super versatile ingredient in making other dishes AND it’s so easy to make, anyone could do it (although vegans might find this a little uncomfortable). By introducing bone broth into your diet, you could see observable benefits to your muscle mass, joint health, gut health, mood, sleep, energy levels and immune system.

But what actually is it?

As bone broth is commonly praised in the nutrition community, you may have already heard of it. Bone broth is very simple to make and involves very little sugar coating..  Whack some bones in water and slow cook. The idea is to extract the nutrients, proteins and minerals that are locked into the bones of your choice, leaving behind a highly nutritious stock. Simples.

1. Start by selecting a number of bones: I usually coat the bones in vinegar (any vinegar works fine but will slightly affect the flavour slightly depending on what you use). People claim the vinegar encourages the breakdown of the bones making the nutrients more bioavailable, this is debated and you are entirely welcome to skip this step.

2. Throw em’ in the pot: If I’m making chicken broth I will pick the majority of the meat from the chicken and throw the vinegar soaked bones in my crock pot and liberally cover them with water, around 12 cups or 3000ml. You don’t have to overthink this. This works the same with beef, pork, lamb and fish bones, you can use common sense to work out volumes of water vs how many bones you are using in one batch. You can add veg: onion, garlic, carrot celery etc.

3. Cook the liquid. I favour using my slow cooker/crock pot as I can just leave it on a low heat and leave it for around 20 hours or just overnight. This same idea can be achieved by cooking on a very low heat with a lid on so it doesn’t reduce away into nothing. Once the broth is ready you can simply sieve out the bones and compost them. What is left can be stored in mason jars and stored in the fridge.

I often hear that people are often a little averse to cooking with bones, they might find it a little uneasy but i’d suggest giving it a try, this is honestly a delicious and super nutritious addition to your diet. Drink it like a soup, or use it as a gravy or stock, use it to make risotto, braise meat, to break a fast or add it to stir fry. There are several possibilities here, feel free to interact with me and let me know how you are being creative with this! Plus you can easily purchase the bones from a local butcher; they are inexpensive and why should dogs have all the fun? 

Fountain Of Youth

So how can you benefit from this wondrous elixir? Firstly, bone broth is an excellent source of Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Phosphorus and Vitamin A. A nutritional profile not to be sniffed at, although I won’t delve into too much of a deep dive into these in the post to save room for describing beneficial compounds and nutrients that are a little more specific to bone broth itself.

Bone broth is an excellent source of collagen. You have likely already heard of collagen – it is the most abundant protein in the human body. The building blocks of bone, teeth, skin, ligaments and likely nicki minage’s arse cheeks (citations needed). Collagen has been praised for keeping people looking and feeling youthful for a number of reasons. Studies have shown that collagen supplementation can act to improve skin elasticity and reduce wrinkles, thus leading to a more youthful appearance. 

Levels of collagen in our bodies decrease as we age making us more prone to disorders such as osteoarthritis, studies suggest that by supplementing collagen you can help mitigate the onset of these disorders. As an active individual myself I was less concerned about my skin looking flawless and more interested in exploring the potential role that collagen might play in joint recovery for sports. It would appear that collagen can be beneficial to athletes recovering from joint pain with studies showing a marked reduction in joint pain and ability to re-engage in physical activity compared to placebo, suggesting that collagen supplementation could be a potential complement to existing Osteoarthritis treatments.

Gelatin in bone broth contains glutamine which helps to maintain the function of the intestinal wall, which prevents and heals a condition known as ‘leaky gut’. In a nutshell, this is a condition caused by the breakdown of the delicate gut lining and is associated with numerous chronic diseases (including mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression). Your gut lining offers a protective layer between your bloodstream and the contents of your intestines which, if damaged, often by poor diet, can allow for substances that don’t normally leak into the bloodstream to pass through leading to inflammation and other issues. Something I like to focus on in particular is the leaking of the compound ‘lipopolysaccharide’ (also known as ‘endotoxin’) which comprises the cell membrane of several gut bacteria and is notoriously responsible for initiating the inflammatory response. (The importance of this will reoccur in several of my other blog posts about the gut microbiome!).

(An important additional point to make here is that the synthesis of collagen from its constituents in the human body is dependent on Vitamin C, which is not available in bone broth, but can be obviously included in the diet from a variety of other sources such as leafy green veg, citrus fruit and bell peppers).

Glycine

Bone broth is also packed full of the amino acid Glycine, which is an non essential amino acid that actually helps to form collagen as well as being involved in a number of other very important processes in the body. To reiterate, non essential means that the amino acid can be produced by the body even if it isn’t received from your diet, NOT that it does not mediate a plethora of important processes in the body, so don’t get confused there. On the contrary, Glycine is used in the synthesis of hemoglobin, creatine, bile salts, glutathione and the nucleotides DNA and RNA. Glycine is involved in gluconeogenesis (the manufacture of glucose), sleep, detoxification, digestion, wound healing and mood regulation.

In addition to this note, Glycine might also be considered a “conditionally essential” amino acid. In order to meet the many important metabolic demands of Glycine, it is important that it is readily available in the body. Despite it being readily manufactured by the body there are many cases in which normal, healthy individuals may not make enough. Researchers have found that the body’s own synthesis of Glycine in adult men following a low protein diet fails to satisfy the baseline metabolic demand. Glycine, it would appear, is responsive to the amino acid composition of the diet and therefore supplemental Glycine may be beneficial. 

Glycine has been discovered to play a role in sleep, by calming the brain and lowering core body temperature. For somebody who is looking to stack nutritional interventions to help them sleep as opposed to taking sleeping pills, increasing glycine intake could prove to be beneficial. 

For those who’ve sank one too many beverages over the past few weeks and coincidently feels they owe their liver a bit of a break, glycine may help. It is no surprise that the liver is a phenomenal organ and abstaining from alcohol can reverse moderate to mild alcohol induced liver damage. Glycine has been shown in rats to significantly boost the recovery of damaged liver cells. In addition to this; Glycine mediates the production of Glutathione, which is well known to help your liver with its metabolism of alcohol. Glutathione is one of the most powerful antioxidants (compounds that prevent cellular damage from oxidative stress from free radicals, basically a process that causes cellular aging, mortality and disease). Glutathione prevents damage to cells, with anti aging properties. You cannot make Glutathione without Glycine. Glutathione works wonders for brain health, by reducing age related brain conditions due to its antioxidant properties.

Think back to our studies on collagen and joint health. A similar solution to these problems can also be found in Glycine. Not only is it a component of collagen itself, Glycine also provides a powerful anti-inflammatory effect via immunomodulation (a way of influencing the immune system and how it responds to stimulus in the body). Keeping chronic inflammation down is incredibly important to staying healthy and avoiding a variety of diseases.

Creatine

Those who are active will likely understand the importance of creatine in the body. It has been discovered that creating production may be bottlenecked from getting too little dietary glycine. Creatine is praised for providing muscles with energy for explosivity and can be considered crucial to developing stronger, larger muscles.

I remember hearing a truckload of nonsense about creatine in school: kids comparing it to anabolic steroids, stating your muscles would explode and making you pass blood with urine. Apologies for debunking the wise theoretical musings of my mate darren in the playground but creatine isn’t a steroid or some crazy artificial intervention for muscle growth.. its actually pretty simple. Its a compound that is naturally produced by the body, created from the combination of amino acids: Arginine and Glycine ( with a little love from methionine along the way). The extra boost of energy to your muscles from creatine supplementation, which can allow for an extra rep or two during training which should never be overlooked.

To summarise then: Bone broth is a delicious addition to the diet that is simple to make, versatile and brings together a number of important benefits. We may not be hunting gazelle for days on end anymore but that doesn’t mean we can’t benefit from the ancient cooking methods of our savvy, crock pot lacking ancestors. The broth benefits those who wish to look and feel younger, improve athletic ability and recovery, boost their metabolic efforts, help maintain good gut health, improve sleep, mood and brain health. For these reasons, I find myself knocking up a pot of the good stuff at least a couple of times a week, and you should too!

Yours Sincerely, 

Matt McCourt

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