Soup or Bone broth, Good for our health?
Since living for the last 12 years in a colder climate, a hot bowl of steaming soup is become a best companion on a blustery winter’s night. Soups and bone broths can be an important addition to ones diet and an easy way of introducing different nutrients into our meals. While bone broth appears to be a recent trend, in the last two years every time I go to the local butcher to ask for those much valued beef bones, they are not as readily available as they used to! But bone broths are actually a centuries old tradition used in different cultures. Bone broths are claimed to be rich in different vitamins, minerals and nutrients such as zinc, magnesium, potassium, calcium, amino acids, l-glutamine and collagen which is thought to benefit gut health while also having anti-inflammatory properties (1,4). The old wives tale of feeding your family chicken soup when ill may have some credence! A study in 2000 suggested that the mild anti-inflammatory effect of chicken soup could be one of the reasons for an effect on mitigating symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections like the common cold (2). But at the very least chicken soup with vegetables added will contain healthy nutrients from the vegetable content will help aid immune health. Bone broth benefits include as an easily digestible food for those with gut issues while also an increased assimilation of nutrients, sooth the mucosal lining of the digestive tract (gut) and includes nutrients important for nervous system, gut health, immune system and blood sugar regulation.
Soup can be beneficial for weight loss as it contains a lot of water it may help you to feel fuller with fewer calories consumed. But instead of cream based soups instead choose broth based soups with added vegetables, pulses, beans, tomatoes or minestrone type soups.
Source of bones in soups are important so ideally use grass-fed organic beef, chicken bones. Soups and bone broths can be easy to make, not necessarily expensive, can be made in a slow cooker, batch cooked and frozen, used as a main meal, snack or bone broths can be used as bases for casseroles and stews.
See recipe section for soup ideas!
Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School (2015). “Whats the Scoop on Bone Soup’?Accessed at http://www.health.harvard@edu: (2) Rennard et al (2000) Chest, 118 (4) 1150-7; (3) Kerley (2018) “Drinking bone broth - is it beneficial or just a fad? Accessed at http://www.nutritonstudies.org ; (4) Wang (2015) Amino Acids, 47 (10) 2143 -2154.
