Update on Bone Broth

“Broth is the new juice,” is the saying on the street. Indeed, interest in genuine bone broth is taking off, thanks not only to my book Nourishing Broth, but also to several other great books on the subject. And the number of artisan companies making broth is growing, as a quick look at the Weston A. Price Foundation Shopping Guide will show.

Broth in slow cookerStill, a few words of caution are necessary.  The first concern comes from an article published by Stephanie Seneff in the Winter 2016 issue of Wise Traditions. She has found that glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp, can substitute for glycine in the collagen of animals fed genetically engineered corn and soy.  Once incorporated into the animal collagen, glyphosate can get incorporated into your own collagen if you are consuming broth made from bones of conventionally raised animals (and that includes farm-raised fish).

When glyphosate substitutes for glycine in collagen, your collagen will not work very well; you will be prone to tears and injuries in the tendons, digestive disorders (because your gut wall is lined with collagen) skin problems (because healthy skin depends on an underlying layer of healthy collagen) and bone disorders (because healthy bone is built on a frame of collagen). Seneff believes that the current epidemic of chronic pain can be explained by the ever increasing amounts of glyphosate in our food.

Moreover, once built into your collagen, it’s hard for your body to get the glyphosate out. It’s also hard to measure glyphosate in our food once it has become incorporated into proteins and enzymes—tests will indicate an absence of glyphosate whereas in fact it is hiding deep in the tissues.

As Seneff points out, consuming broth made from bones of conventionally raised animals can do more harm than good.  That is why it is so important to make sure that the broth you buy comes from animals raised on pasture and not given genetically engineered feed. If you have any doubts, don’t buy that brand!

A second concern is the proliferation of broth products packaged in aseptic packaging. These packages are lined with aluminum covered with low-density polyethylene (LDPE). LDPE is considered one of the “safe” plastics (graded as a number 4), which means that it is safe for food contact and does not contain phthalates.  A quick internet search reveals that it can withstand temperatures of 80 °C continuously and 95 °C for a short time. And there’s the rub.  In aseptic packaging, sterility is achieved with a flash-heating process of  91 to 146 °C.  A temperature of 146 °C is pretty darn hot—way above the boiling point and what it does to the LDPE lining (not to mention the broth itself) is anyone’s guess.  If the LDPE lining melts at that temperature, then the broth comes in contact with aluminum, the toxic metal that will migrate into the food, especially when subjected to high temperatures.

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I’d like to see broth in aseptic packages analyzed for aluminum content. In the meantime, I think it best to err on the side of caution and purchase only frozen broth (packaged in plastic containers, graded 2, 4 or 5).  And, by the way, my experience with broth in aseptic packaging is that it does not gel at all when refrigerated, so either the broth was not of very good quality to begin with, or the high temperature processing has broken down the collagen beyond repair.

Really, it’s best to make your own broth.  Here’s my simple method, one that anyone can do:

SLOW COOKER CHICKEN BROTH
Makes 1 gallon

Saved bones from 2 pasture-raised chickens fed non-GMO feed
1 pigs foot or hock, from hogs fed non-GMO feed and/or chicken feet and heads from 2 chickens
¼ cup vinegar
1 onion, cut in quarters (no peeling necessary)

Place all ingredients in a slow cooker and fill with filtered water.  Cook overnight on low. In the morning, allow to cool. Use a ladle to remove the broth, ladling through a strainer into a 2-quart Pyrex pitcher.  Place the pitcher in the fridge to cool the broth.

Fill the slow cooker again with water and cook overnight on low.  The next morning, allow the broth to cool and remove the bones with tongs and a slotted spoon.  (The bones will be soft—your dog, cat, pigs or chickens will love these!) Ladle the broth through a strainer into a second 2-quart Pyrex pitcher and refrigerate.

The first pitcher of broth should gel very well; the second will gel but less so.

You may remove the fat that congeals at the top of the broth but it is not necessary.  Use the broth within 3 days or transfer to containers (graded 2, 4 or 5) and freeze.

Author: Sally Fallon Morell

Sally Fallon Morell is best known as the author of Nourishing Traditions®: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. This well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods contains a startling message: animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels.

39 thoughts on “Update on Bone Broth”

  1. Sally love your tips for the broth, and I have fed my dogs bones, but not when then batch contained onions! Onions are poisonous to dogs! Tho the amount they would get from the bones would not be a large amount, it can still make some dogs sick. Thanks for your tips, I shop at your farm and I am so pleased I am able to do so!

    1. It’s actually not recommended to feed cooked bones to dogs. The bone can splinter and cause havoc in the intestines.

  2. Is the vinegar absolutely necessary? I have a sulfite sensitivity and must avoid it. I love your products at PA Bowen.

    1. It’s not. I hate the taste of it with vinegar, so if vinegar is all that’s stopping you from getting this important food, leave it out.

  3. Thanks so much for addressing the concerns that Stephanie Seneff raised. I heard her talk about this topic during her WAPF conference speech when I bought the recording. I appreciate hearing what you have to say about it. I do buy my beef, lamb and chicken bones at a local farmers market, and I’m pretty sure they are all pasture raised (except in winter in this cold climate), but I will check with each of the farmers. I love making my own broth, and have been doing so for 17 years since I found your work. (Courtesy of Acres, USA, who sold a tape of “Why Butter is Better”!). The work you are doing is so profoundly important–I can’t thank you enough!

  4. Someone from Time wrote a really lame article about your book, Nourishing Broth, and it’s like they are attempting to refute the benefits of broth just for the sake of having an article published. Uhg, anyway, I thought I would bring it to your attention in case you’d like to respond to their silliness.

    http://time.com/4159156/bone-broth-health-benefits/

  5. Is not consuming broth at all preferred/healthier than consuming broth from bones of conventionally raised animals? Thank you.

  6. What is your valued opinion of the new Ancient Foods Bone Broth Powder? Most importantly the process of High pressure sustained heat? which is how they create the product to keep the glucusomincologens content and potassium calcium and such at its highest level by a shorter heating period..

    I like the product but I am unsure of its process ands health benefits lost or not there? I am considering promoting this product as it is best I have found of its kind…Homemade will always rule..but for the fast paced people this product may be good…

  7. I use your chicken soup/stock recipe found in The Maker’s Diet by Jordan Rubin as my broth that I consume daily or when fasting. I’m wondering if you have the numbers on this broth as to the Calories, Fat, Protien, Sodium, ETC?

  8. After your turkey dinner, strip down that turkey carcass and shove it in the large crock pot or electronic pressure pot. Makes a great rich broth concentrate for your soups or drink.

  9. Thank you for sharing your recipe! It doesn’t say, though, whether you use raw or cooked bones for the broth. I assume you mean left over bones from a previous meal. Wouldn’t raw bones make for a more nourishing broth? Thanks you!

  10. Good afternoon,
    I would just like to ask something:
    I have been making bone broth in my slow cooker since I read your awesome book, but I saw that some other people say it gets dangerous if you cook it very long (more than 24 hours) since it releases glutamates. Is this true?
    Thank you!
    Reinette Boshoff

    1. Hi Reinette,

      What is released is glutamic acid, an essential amino acid. Some people are quite sensitive to these and can only cook their broth for a short period (2-3 hours) but most people can tolerate a long-cooked broth.

      Best, Sally

    2. What is released is glutamic acid, an essential amino acid. Some people are quite sensitive to these and can only cook their broth for a short period (2-3 hours) but most people can tolerate a long-cooked broth.
      Best, Sally

  11. Hi Sally, Thanks so much for all your research and sharing of these info. I’ve been trying recipes in your Nourishing Traditions cookbook and recently made stock using shrimp shells. The recipe says to remove fat that congeals at the top after refrigerating it. This practice was advised for the other stock recipes too in the book. I wonder what’s the logic behind that? I thought good fats are valued and treasured, Isn’t the more good fat the better? Thank you for your clarification!

  12. Is there any reason why there’s no salt in the recipe?
    I’m trying this recipe with lamb bones, rendering some of the fat first, then the bones into the slow-cooker for bone broth.
    I love the knowledge you’ve shared on all the different platforms, it’s the best.
    Greetings from South Africa.
    Miranda

    1. Broth definitely needs salt, but it’s best not to add it when making it, because the broth will always reduce a bit and then may be too salty. Add salt to taste at the end.
      Best, Sally

  13. Will using feet from chickens raised on pasture and fed a non-gmo feed be enough or is it necessary to purchase certified organic?

    1. It does not have to be certified organic – pasture-raised and non-gmo (and ideally soy and corn free) is what you are looking for. Being certified organic is both prohibitively expensive for many small farmers, and is ultimately a watered down version of what it should be in order to accommodate industrial agriculture. Many farmers are growing/raising better than legal certified organic standards. Get to know you farmer, ask lots of questions. If they are bothered by answering questions or don’t allow visits, that’s a flag to keep looking.

  14. Sally, we’ve been making bone broth from the elk, deer, and moose we hunt. However, they naturally feed in the fields where the farmers spray Round-up. So should we not use these animals for bone broth? We thought we were making the ‘healthy’ choice.
    Also, do you know if freeze drying damages raw milk?

    1. Rancidity of beef fat is not a problem–it is very stable at the cooking temperature of 212 F. But chicken fat may become rancid and the best way to remove it is refrigerate it, then scrape off the congealed fat. It’s very hard to remove all that fat by skimming the liquid broth.

      I don’t recommend the InstantPot, which is a pressure cooker that takes the heat higher than 212 F, and we have no idea what that does to the proteins in the broth.

      Best,
      Sally

    2. That article’s author claims that ACV has fructose but I don’t think that is correct. Vinegar is made from the juice of crushed apples, which is double fermented. During the first fermentation, yeast converts the sugars in the juice into alcohol, then in the second fermentation bacteria converts the alcohol into acetic and malic acid. There generally are no residual sugars.

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