670. Is bone broth good for you? It is on a continuing upward popularity trend, so what’s the deal? This episode originally aired in March 2024.
670. Is bone broth good for you? It is on a continuing upward popularity trend, so what’s the deal?
This episode originally aired in March 2024.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. Find a full transcript here.
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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, why I may have thought 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 after 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 not feeling myself.
Like everybody else, I don’t like feeling unwell and would very much like a solution. And unfortunately, my family doctor 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 is something best suited to this. So, I went online and had a look at bone broth near me. And the first thing I noticed was the price: not cheap. The second thing I noted was that, if I removed my primal drive to find a health solution, every website selling bone broth was absolutely chock full of ‘red flag’ language. Words, like one I already used myself: "reset", amongst others like: "cleanse, purify and inflammation." These being liberally sprinkled throughout claims that bone broth might, in fact, be a cure all.
So, I decided to stop looking and write out a truth table for the claims. This is something we do in logic 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. So when I truth tabled out the claims based on the UK’s best known bone broth website, the argument proved to be INVALID. Now, this doesn’t mean that the claims are false. Likewise a valid claim doesn’t make it true. Just logically valid. I can write out an argument, for example, that the moon is made of green cheese in such a way that it's a valid argument. We all know that the moon is not made of green cheese. 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.
So first of all, let us 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, which can be bone and water. 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…” So 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 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 that it was due to vitamin C. So what ancestors are we talking about here? Because if it’s any ancestor pre 1930, then they almost 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 claim that is total nonsense, probably thrown in there because of the current trend for ancestral wellness makes words like 'ancestral' and 'primal' real buzz words.
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 a false equivalence, which is an informal fallacy. Because it's making an equivalence between ancient cultures being healthy and their well-being. Let me just point out here that ancient cultures believed that bloodletting cured a number of ailments, from fever to melancholy. That 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 several mental health issues, cocaine was considered 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 which could be considered healthy. Making a claim for things being healthy because cultures around the world have done them for a long time is FALSE.
The level of false correlation continues in the reviews for bone broth. My favourite user review 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. And definitely think you need to look up false correlation.
Anyway, lets have an overview of the claims. Bone Broth will:
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 just drink bones boiled in 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 “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 bones with vegetable broth. It was found that bone broth was a poor source of nutrients. However the addition of vegetables increased the levels of potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron.
Finally, although I would never consider it to be 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 Stanford School of Medicine, who stated: “Since we don’t digest 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 I would normally 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 you should be thinking more about this. You can get your nutrients from real food. And any bone broth that had good nutrient levels in it, those levels came from the addition of vegetables, not from the bone broth itself 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
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