The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal • September - December 2017 • Page 46
Meat Broth or Bone Broth — What’s the Difference, Which is Best for You, and Why? By Jenna Wunder, MPH, RD My relationship with homemade chicken soup runs deep. Not only has it been my favorite food my entire life, but it is also the first meal I learned to cook for myself. My mom is famous for her chicken soup. I learned from the best. Like many families around the world, we have a traditional chicken soup recipe, passed down through the generations from my grandmother, to my mom, to me, and on it will go. Ours is a Jewish version, with onions, parsnips, carrots, dill, and parsley. Without dill or parsnip — you’ve messed with the Jewish chicken soup gods. Once I added garlic. My mom was horrified. I had challenged tradition and lost. As a clinical nutritionist and seasoned cook, I have become a chicken soup expert, teaching my patients every day how to make it the “right” way. The key elements involve what is added to the pot and how long it cooks. Meat broth — whether chicken, beef, lamb, turkey, or something else — is a soup made with raw meat, skin, joints, and bones, and cooked for short periods, anywhere from two to six hours. Bone broth, on the other hand, is made primarily with bones (surprise) and joints but very little meat or skin. Typically bone broth is cooked for much longer periods than meat broth, from 12 to 72 hours. I’m very specific in how I teach patients to make meat broth. I recommend starting with a whole raw chicken or marrow bones plus meaty beef bones, since we get added benefits from the meat, cartilage, and skin. I recommend using a specific amount of water based on the quantity of meat and bones. The goal is a medicinal broth — a healing nectar. The benefits of broth are vast. Broth provides valuable minerals in a form your body can easily absorb and use, including calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur, chondroitin, glucosamine, and a variety of trace minerals. Broth aids digestion by producing and stimulating digestive enzymes. Broth also fights inflammation and infections. If your broth gels when it cools, you also get benefits to your hair, nails, and skin.
Meat broth is a soup made with raw meat, skin, joints, and bones, and cooked for short periods, anywhere from two to six hours. Bone broth, on the other hand, is made primarily with bones (surprise) and joints but very little meat or skin. Typically bone broth is cooked for much longer periods than meat broth, from 12 to 72 hours.
As a certified GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) practitioner, I learned directly from Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride that homemade meat broth cooked for short cooking times is THE way to heal and seal any holes in our gut lining. Over time, factors such as prolonged stress, exposure to toxins including pesticides and radiation, poor eating choices, and repeated antibiotic and prescription drug use can cause our intestinal lining to develop leaks that allow undigested food, especially protein molecules, to enter our bloodstream. These foreign compounds wreak havoc on our digestive system, immune system, and brain, causing digestive symptoms, autoimmune symptoms, and/or behavioral symptoms in both children and adults. Bone broth has the advantage of being higher in mineral content, but true gut healing happens only with meat broth. I always recommend starting with meat broth. It’s essential to the healing quality of the broth that all meat and bones are sourced from the highest quality animals. Beef must be 100 percent grass-fed and finished. Organic beef unfortunately is not suitable because the cows have still been fed corn. Cows cannot digest corn. A corn-fed cow is therefore a sick cow and its fat is inflammatory. Fat from a grass-fed cow, however, is higher in anti-inflammatory fats and is healing to the gut and the brain. Chickens need to be organically fed and, ideally, pastured. Chickens can digest grain, allowing the organic certification to be acceptable, but it’s also important that the chicken had access to roam around outside and eat insects and bugs as nature intended for a healthy chicken. Whenever I cook meat and bones from any animal, I always offer a prayer of gratitude to thank them for helping me to nourish my body.
About five years ago, I diagnosed myself with a severe MSG sensitivity. One night while experiencing headache, heart racing, anxiety, and insomnia, I Googled “alternative names for MSG.” I knew, for me, that MSG induced migraines so I carefully monitored my diet, but I didn’t think I had eaten any MSG that day. I found a page called “Hidden sources of MSG” (www.truthinlabeling.org/hiddensources.html) where I learned that 40 ingredients other than MSG contain the same chemical, processed free glutamic acid, that causes MSG reactions! I spent years learning about these ingredients and eliminating them from my diet. I became passionate about teaching my patients about these hidden ingredients and how to avoid them (please see my previous Crazy Wisdom Journal article, archived at www.scribd.com/ document/294847342/Jenna-Wunder-Q-A-PDF).
Homemade meat broth cooked for short cooking times is THE way to heal and seal any holes in our gut lining. One of the many benefits of broth is the amino acid content. Glutamine is a conditionally essential amino acid, meaning our body usually makes it on its own. In a healthy, strong body, glutamine is tightly regulated and helps to maintain brain, immune, and gut function. When your body is weakened and therefore more sensitive, even small amounts of glutamine can cause the body to react adversely, causing MSG-like reactions including, headaches, nausea, anxiety, panic, tics, and even seizures. It’s for this reason that I recommend short cooking times for broth: the amino acid content, including glutamine, triples as the broth cooks longer. When chicken broth is simmered on the stovetop for only two hours, or four hours on high in a slow cooker, the levels of glutamine are kept to a manageable level (beef broth should be simmered for four hours on the stovetop or six in a slow cooker). This way, you still get the added benefits of the fat, the softened cartilage, and the easily absorbable nutrients that are necessary to heal the gut. Many health care practitioners sing the praises of homemade broth and recommend that their patients buy bones and cook them for 12 to 72 hours — despite the fact that the long cooking time increases the glutamine content of the broth. Although many people can tolerate long-cooked bone broth, individuals with significant leaky gut symptoms (bloating, fluctuations between diarrhea and constipation, gassy, burpy) or behavioral disruptions (mental fog, inability to focus, anxiety, depression,
It’s essential to the healing quality of the broth that all meat and bones are sourced from the highest quality animals. Beef must be 100 percent grass-fed and finished. Chickens need to be organically fed and, ideally, pastured. Whenever I cook meat and bones from any animal, I always offer a prayer of gratitude to thank them for helping me to nourish my body.