Scrolling through my newsfeed on Instagram, I noticed a constant trend among some celebrities: bone broth. People claim bone broth is beneficial to your health by supporting a healthy gut and digestion, but is it just another fad or is there truth behind this ancient dish? After all, chicken soup does help fight off the cold by strengthening the body's immune system.
Bone Broth Benefits
The fact is, boiling bone marrow releases an abundance of vitamins such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and potassium. The broth also aids in collagen production, a protein, which helps to strengthen bones, cartilage, muscles, and builds hair, nails, and skin (even reducing wrinkles and potentially cellulite).
Although people have claimed bone broth improves digestion and reduces a few wrinkles, there is no solid evidence that shows bone broth is definitely beneficial to health. Yet, it's not harmful and still can be a nutritious addition to a meal. As long as the bones are good quality, particularly grass fed which is anti-inflammatory, the broth can provide many benefits.
How to Incorporate into Diet
There are many ways to try to incorporate bone broth in your diet including soups, roasts, pies, even just plain with seasoning. The broth is usually simmered for around 8 hours or boiled for 4, but can be stored for up to half a year when frozen. It would be useful to have this nutrient-dense broth, especially during flu season. The broth can also easily be bought in stores or a local restaurant, but homemade bone broth can be as, if not even more, both nutritious and delicious.
Bone broth may not be the magical elixir some celebrities or health fanatics rave about, but it would not be a bad idea to include this in your diet every now and then. The nutrients that are provided are beneficial to developing healthy and strong bones, hair, and skin. The gelatin in the broth provides proper digestion, the amino acids give anti-inflammatory effects, and migrates infection caused by the cold or flu.
Whether or not these benefits are guaranteed is uncertain, but it could work for you and could be worth a try after all.