Bone broth is incredibly nourishing to the body and the immune system. I love making it in the fall and winter when the temperature is dropping, and I need extra warmth in my body. It also fils the whole house with an amazing aroma. I usually set this up in the evening before I go to bed, and let it cook overnight. Drinking a cup or two a day is really helpful for the body. Let me explain more.
Bone Broth Benefits
Bone broth helps to reduce inflammation, improves your skin and its elasticity, promotes tissue repair, boosts brain health, boosts immunity and helps ease aching joints.
Bone broth is rich in collagen, glycine, gelatin, chondroitin, calcium and magnesium all essential nutrients in the body that we need as women. And is especially helpful if you are dealing with infertility, in midlife, perimenopause, menopause and beyond. Let’s just say for women at all stages of life bone broth is beneficial.
Bone broth is a whole food. It helps to promote metabolic balance, blood sugar balance, better sleep, and is a powerful gut repair food. Bone broth helps to heal leaky gut by improving intestinal permeability.
When I started researching bone broth, I thought to myself… THIS is what our Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers meant about the healing affects of Chicken Soup! Bone broth is full of nutrients that nourishes so many aspects of the body, including our hearts and souls!
What’s a Whole Food, and Where do I Find Them
Whole foods are what works best for the body nutritionally. They have the most nutritional value. Our body knows what to do with them from a digestion stand point. They are balancing to our blood sugar. They are anti-inflammatory (for the most part – dairy can be inflammatory for some ). They help to keep our metabolic health in balance. And in turn, all of these things help to keep our hormones in balance. Whole foods are found when shopping the perimeter of the grocery store. Whole foods are vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, dairy, eggs and meats. Basically anything that comes from the earth or an animal.
You can find whole foods at any grocery store. However, I have found the best places to find whole foods are at a local co-op or health food store. Because they do a ton of due diligence in researching the healthiest options. They buy from sustainable farms. Work hard to eliminate food chemicals, food additives, sugar, low quality ingredients, and pesticides.
And they work with growers that have the utmost integrity. Also, because I have dealt with quite a few food sensitivities, I have found a co-op is much easier for me to navigate. Because when I do purchase something in a package, I can easily read the label and there are much fewer and healthier ingredients in those items.
Processed Foods, Food Chemicals & Sugar
Processed foods are typically in the middle of the grocery store. We could also call these the “Big Food” items. Process foods typically have lots of extra ingredients. Just look at those labels when you are shopping! Those labels are LONG! Process foods add as much as 17 teaspoons of sugar a day to the average American’s diet. The more processed something is… the more food chemicals, sugars, and unrecognizable ingredients there are. Our gut does not “process” these ingredients well (pun intended)! These ingredients are hard on our digestion, meaning they disrupt our gut lining and our microbiome. And they are even harder on our metabolic health (think blood sugar balance).
Why are they hard on us? We don’t digest food chemicals well. Most of these foods have some type of sugar or sugar chemical in them. (Did you know there can be over 70 different names for sugar?) And these added ingredients are often addictive.
Food chemicals are additives that in many cases are meant to trigger the brains reward pathway, and create an addictive response. For example in a Connecticut College study with rats, they found that Oreos had the same addictive qualities as cocaine. Now we all might think that sentence is for shock value, and for sure it is to a certain degree… but when was the last time you took sugar out of your diet completely… and how did that go?
Plain and simply sugar is addictive.
It’s also often hidden in ingredient lists. There are more than 70 different names for sugar. And… “Big Food” will often use more than one of these sugars in a processed food item. And… for the record… why is “Big Food” hiding sugar under 70 different names?
Processed Foods & Hormone Health
Sugar and food chemicals are big contributors to metabolic health imbalance as well gut microbiome disruption.
When our metabolic health is disrupted, it is called Metabolic Syndrome. Metabolic Syndrome can lead to a cascade of issues including: belly fat, excess weight, blood sugar imbalance, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, sodium intolerance, low “good” HDL cholesterol, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
Hormones are a factor in our metabolic health too! Excess cortisol production, meaning, excess stress, can contribute to metabolic instability, or Metabolic Syndrome. AND… if you are a midlife woman, the drop in estrogen alone, can DRAMATICALLY affect our ability to stabilize our metabolism. You see, estrogen is a major stabilizer for our blood sugar and insulin response. If you are a midlife woman struggling to balance your blood sugar, your deficient hormones could be a big factor in why. This happened to me!
Additionally, gut microbiome disruption can disrupt our estrogen and progesterone hormone balance. Good digestion is essential to keeping our hormones in balance. When we have gut dysfunction, a disrupted microbiome, or leaky gut… our spent hormones don’t easily pass through the three stages of detoxification. Instead, those spent hormones, and toxins can pass through the gut, into the blood stream, and cause inflammation, joint pain, and potentially bigger issues.
So you see… eating whole foods is essential to our hormone health, metabolic health, and over all health!
**I have one caveat to the health benefits of bone broth. And that is, bone broth is a high histamine food. If you are struggling with histamine issues or MCAS this may not be the best option for you, and may not have the same healing properties. Instead you’ll want to work on those issues first, and use a simple meat broth in the mean time. Which is typically meat boiled in water for about 20 minutes.
Beef & Chicken Bone Broth Recipe
So now that we have visited why Whole Foods are so important to our over all health, and what they can prevent, let’s get to the recipe!
This recipe comes from my butcher Kevin at my local co-op. The butchers at my local co-op are awesome! First of all they are a wealth of information on our local farms, suppliers, and cuts of meat. Additionally, they are really fun to talk recipes with too.
As you read through this you are likely going to think “What the ____?” Chicken feet? Yeah I know, the chicken feet were totally out of my comfort zone too, but I really wanted to dive into the healing benefits of bone broth, as I needed it for gut healing. So I decided to put my heebie-jeebie feelings aside to fully meld into that healing.
The beauty of the chicken feet (if you can get past the visual), is that because they have a multitude of joints, it increases the production of collagen in the broth exponentially. The extra joints increase the gel factor. This is what you want to max out the healing benefits of the broth for the gut, joints and skin.
A quick tip for you, I usually find the bones I need in the meat freezer section at my co-op. So you might start there, or ask the butcher for them.
I recommend drinking 8 ounces of bone broth twice daily. I usually heat a little up in a sauce pan, pour it in a mug, add some really good salt like Redmonds Real Salt and drink! You can also use bone broth as a base to make soup. You can cook your rice in it, or saute’ vegetables in it.
There are all kinds of ways you can incorporate bone broth into your day. So use your imagination, and start your healing! And if you’re ready for support, click the link below and let’s get started.
Beef & Chicken Bone Broth Recipe
- 1 package of Chicken Feet (in the freezer section of my co-op)
- 1-2 large beef bones – if you can get them sliced into 1-2″ sections, even better (the more joints the better on the bones)
- 8 cups of water or fill your slow cooker to about 1″ from top
- 1 carrot -peeled and cut into chunks
- 2 onions quartered
- 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar
- 6-8 slim slices of ginger root
- 4 cloves of garlic
- Redmonds Real Salt and pepper
- Place bones, veggies, spices and apple cider vinegar into the bottom of a crock pot.
- Cover with water.
- Make sure that the bones are covered with water up to 1″ from the top. (add more if needed).
- Cover slow cooker, and set on low (by cooking it on low you keep the scum to a minimum) for 8 to 10 hours.
- Strain the broth through cheese cloth or a strainer, which will filter the bones and the bits,
- Discard all the bits and bones.
- Place in a glass storage dish, and chill in the fridge. It should be jelly like when you take it out after chilling, but will liquify when warmed again.
- Once chilled there may be a layer of fat, you can chip this off and discard.
- Warm up 8oz or so at a time, place in a mug and drink, or use in your cooking. You can use this like chicken broth, and add to soups for stock, cook veggies in it, or cook grains with it instead of water. Use your imagination!
- Additionally this could be made in an Instant Pot, just follow your pot’s directions.
References:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131015123341.htm
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/carbohydrates/added-sugar-in-the-diet/
https://www.bodi.com/blog/other-names-for-sugar
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39181620/
**Updated 1-19-26
Some links in this article may be affiliate links, and Hormone Love may earn a small referral commission for that link. The commission is paid by the retailer, and is no additional cost to you. Please know I choose these products and links with integrity and discernment. These are products I have tried and use myself. These small commissions help me run Hormone Love, do the work I love, and create more free content for you. Thank you for your support!