Bone Broth is on a continuing upward popularity trend, what’s the deal?
Bone Broth is on a continuing upward popularity trend, what’s the deal?
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
Have a fitness question? Email Kevin at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or leave us a voicemail at (510) 353-3014.
Find Get-Fit Guy on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to the newsletter for more fitness tips.
Get-Fit Guy is a part of Quick and Dirty Tips.
Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com
https://www.facebook.com/GetFitGuy
Hello valued listeners, Kevin Don, the ‘Get Fit Guy’ here with your weekly dose of whatever I felt like writing about, which may be only very loosely related to fitness. This week, I wanted to examine the claims of bone broth. The reason for this is that, even in spite of my own cynicism, I almost found myself reaching for some. So, let me share a bit about why I thought about it, what may have made me of it as a solution and what the score is with bone broth as an intervention in any fitness/ wellness setting.
Recently, I haven’t been feeling very well. It may be for many reasons: stress from multiple assignments due at the same time for my university degree, I’ve also had to have the police out 4 times to my apartment complex due to being stalked by some crazy lady, whose dog attacked my dog and now she waits outside for me and follows me about screaming really quite nasty verbal abuse. Anyway, I have been having an unusually sore tummy, bloating, transient stabbing pains, low key nausea. Just generally not feeling myself.
Like everyone else, I don’t enjoy feeling out of the ordinary and would very much like a solution and unfortunately, my GP is about as much use as a chocolate teapot. So, I am trying to figure things out on my own. One stream of thought that came to mind was: I maybe need a ‘gut reset’ and maybe bone broth was something best suited to this. So, I went online and had a look at bone broth near me. First thing I noted was the price. The second thing I noted was that, if I removed my primal drive to find a health solution, every website was chock full of my ‘red flag’ language. I mean, words like I used myself already: reset, amongst others like: cleanse, purify and inflammation. These being liberally sprinkled throughout claims that bone broth might, in fact, cure all things.
So, I decided to stop looking and write out a truth table for the claims. This is something we do in philosophy to check for the validity of an argument. An argument being a claim or series of claims that lead to a conclusion. An argument not being a quarrel in this case. When I truth tabled out the claims on the UK’s best known bone broth website, the argument was INVALID. Now, this doesn’t mean that the claims are false. Likewise a valid argument doesn’t make it true. Just logically valid. I can write out an argument that the moon is made of green cheese and make it valid. We all know this is not the case that the moon is made of green cheese, however. But having an invalid argument as the basis of your entire business model certainly means the claims are open for further investigation. And you probably know by now that I’m like a heat seeking missile for BS.
Let us first of all take a look at what bone broth is, in case you have either been living under a rock or literally don’t speak English. Bone broth is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a broth made from bones. It is made from boiling animal or fish bones in water. Sometimes, some herbs or spices or even vegetables are added to the water, but this is not necessary for bone broth. Now, according to the website here of the aforementioned UK’s largest bone broth maker: “Our ancestors figured out that simmering animal bones for hours and hours would help them extract essential nutrients…” Now, this claim here already has me asking some questions. How exactly did our ‘ancestors’ figure this out? Bearing in mind that the first micronutrients were not identified and isolated until the 1930’s. This first discovery being vitamin C. Now, it is the case that the Royal Navy doctor, James Lind, in 1747 correlated ingestion of limes with absence of scurvy in sailors. But he didn’t know this was due to any particular nutrient. So what ancestors are we talking about here? If it’s any ancestor pre 1930, then they most certainly did NOT figure out that boiling bones extracted nutrients, since they were neither aware of nutrients nor able to isolate them. So, straight out the gates, we have a total nonsense claim, probably thrown in there because the current trends are for ancestral wellness.
Now, onto the claims themselves for one broth. The website continues: “Cultures around the world have long prized bone broth for its healing properties, from arthritis to digestive issues to infertility”. So, this is an informal fallacy, called the false equivalence. The claim is making an equivalence between ancient cultures and health and healing. Let me just point out here that ancient cultures believed that bloodletting cured a number of ailments, from fever to melancholy. Mercury, which we now know to be highly toxic, was used to treat sexually transmitted diseases. Tobacco was known as ‘God’s remedy’, an ice pick like instrument was rammed through the orbital area above the eyeball and into the brain to sever connections to the prefrontal cortex to cure mental health issues, cocaine was a tonic and people deliberately infected themselves with tapeworms to lose weight. So, no one can seriously tell me that the claim that transglobal cultures across time have had a monopoly on anything at all, which is healthy. This claim is FALSE.
The level of false correlation continues in the reviews. My favourite one being: “I definitely think it is helping my IBS.” Well, if you think it is, this means you have no evidence. Therefore, whatever you are thinking is anything but definite. I definitely think you need to look up false correlation.
Anyway, lets have an overview of the claims:
Gut support
Boosted immune system
Age with confidence
Healthier skin
Stronger hair and nails
Reduced Inflammation
Better Sleep
Healthier weight.
I mean, if you remove food and drink bone water, I’m not surprised that people lose weight to be honest.
What does science say?
Well, the Center for Nutritional Studies (Jan 2, 2019) noted that “There is no evidence of an advantage to consuming amino acids and nutrients from bone broth as opposed to other foods.”
A British study (McCance & Widdowson) analysed the nutritional composition of bone broth and bone and vegetable broth. It was found that bone broth was a poor source of many nutrients. However the addition of vegetables increased the levels of potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron.
Finally, although I would never consider it a valid source, TIME magazine (Jan, 2016) ran an article titled ‘Science Can’t Explain Why Everyone is Drinking Bone Broth.” The article did, however, have several quotes from respected sources, such as William Percy, Professor at the Sanford School of Medicine, who stated: “Since we don’t collagen whole, the idea that eating collagen promotes bone growth is wishful thinking. The idea that because bone broth contains collagen translates somehow into more collagen being produced in the human body is nonsensical.”
Now, normally, I would say that if you want to go have some bone broth or do some other crazy thing that you can afford, go do because PLACEBO is real and doesn’t harm anyone. But in this case, I would review the evidence that points to the opposite. A 2013 UK study found bone broth to contain over 10 times the levels lead than the water alone did. What was interesting was that the bones used in the study were derived from organic animals. Another study, conducted in 2012, found that there was “markedly high lead concentrations compared to a control of tap water.” And concluded that “in view of the dangers of lead consumption to the human body, we recommend doctors and nutritionists take the risk of lead contamination into account with patients who consume bone broth.”
So, to conclude: social media says yes, science says hmmm maybe think more about this. You can get more nutrients from real food, any bone broth that had good nutrient levels in it, those levels came from the addition of vegetables, not the bones themselves and bone broth seems to contain high levels of lead.
As always, thank you for listening and send any fun emails to me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, the director of podcasts Brannan Goetschius and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at
getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app.