9 Benefits of Bone Broth

So many of you reached out asking about these over the past year, and we could not be more thrilled to give you the opportunity to add them to your box and have them delivered right to your front door! Bone broth is all the hype these days, and there are definitely many reasons why! 

To give us a better idea of what all the bone broth excitement is all about, we reached out to one of our awesome customers and Holistic Nutritionist, Amy Ritchie, to give us the low down!

Why Buy Bones?

As a nutritionist, bone broth is one of my go to dietary recommendations. The bones from wild & grass-fed animals can be used to make a healing, detoxifying, mineral rich broth! High quality bones matter, I always remind my clients “you are what you eat, eats.” Since you’ll be extracting nutrients from the bones you want to make sure the animal was healthy and ate a nutritious diet.

Is Bone Broth the Same as Stock?

No. Stock is typically simmered for a short amount of time and is used for flavor. Bone broths are simmered for 8-48 hours and are used for taste as well as their nutrient content and medicinal properties. A real bone broth turns to an almost jelly like consistency in the fridge due to its gelatin content.

Benefits

• Athletic Performance: Dr. Cate Shanahan, who designed the nutrition program for the entire Laker’s team, includes bone broth to help support and repair the player’s joints, tendons and ligaments. That’s right – Kobe’s drinking bone broth! Bone broth can help increase lean body mass, support connective tissue, decrease inflammation and speed recovery time.
• Gut Health: the nutrients in bone broth are extremely healing to the digestive lining and can benefit many digestive issues including leaky gut, food intolerances, bacterial imbalances (dysbiosis), IBS and inflammatory bowel diseases (colitis and crohn’s).
• Hair, Skin & Nails: bone broth is rich in collagen which gives our skin it’s youthful tone, texture and appearance and can help reduce the visibility of wrinkles. It may even reduce the appearance of cellulite!
• Arthritis: thanks to the chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine bone broth can help reduce inflammation, joint paint and arthritis
• Sleep & Stress: bone broth is high in the amino acid glycine which helps promote relaxation and restful sleep
• Mood: a health gut improves our mood produces the majority of our feel good hormone – serotonin. That’s something to smile about :) 
• Immune & Autoimmune: The gut houses 70% of our immune system! Supporting the integrity of our gut lining has far reaching effects and may benefit autoimmune conditions and food sensitivities.
• Detoxification, metabolism & healthy weight: the sulfur and glutathione in bone broth support healthy detoxification while the protein and minerals support healthy weight and metabolism.
• Nutrients: bone broth contains bioavailable nutrients including collagen/gelatin, glucosamine, hyaluronic acid, calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, arginine, glycine, glutamine, proline and fish bones also contain iodine.

 How to Use

• I use bone broth to make soups and stews
• You can cook vegetables, braise meat or use for gravies 
• If you’re feeling brave.. you can sip warm bone broth throughout the day! I prefer to do this with chicken broth which has a milder taste.
• You can also scoop the fat out and use it for a cooking oil

How to Cook

There are many variations of bone broth but the basics are: bones, water, vinegar and vegetables

Beef, Lamb, Buffalo: brown the bones first and add any drippings or meet into the pot

1. Place the bones in a large stock pot or slow cooker and cover with water (you want the water to just cover if using a slow cooker about 2lb of bones per 4L of water)
2. Add 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (it helps pull out the nutrients)
3. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for 8-48 hours (8 for fish, 24 for chicken, 48 for beef)
4. Near the end of cooking time add 1 onion, 2 garlic cloves, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, a bunch of herbs (rosemary, thyme and parsley), 1 tbsp sea salt and 1 tsp black pepper
5. Strain out veggies, bones and meat scraps and discard
6. Store in the fridge (5 days) or freezer
7. Salt to taste before use 
8.  

Still thinking about trying truLOCAL? You can have these awesome products and more delivered right to your front door, anywhere in Ontario! Click here to start building your box today. 

Want to learn more about the benefits of bone broth? Check out another awesome article, here. 

Posted on July 20th, 2023