Health and fitness websites claim that drinking bone broth is a miracle cure. Here’s what some new research has to say about that.
Google the term “bone broth.” You’ll quickly discover people claiming that it’s the latest miracle cure. Broth made from animal bones simmered up to 20 hours can heal your gut, boost your immune system, reduce cellulite, strengthen teeth and bones, tackle inflammation and much more. Or that’s what a host of health and fitness websites claim. But there’s been little research to support those claims — until now. Researchers in Spain report promising signs that broth from dry-cured ham bones might help protect the heart.
Leticia Mora works at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology in Valencia, Spain. She didn’t set out to validate health claims of bone-broth fans. This biochemist is merely interested in the chemistry of meat. “The processing of meat involves a lot of changes in terms of biochemistry,” she explains.
Cooking meat releases nutrients that the body can absorb. As we digest meat and related products such as broth, our bodies interact with those compounds. What happens during these interactions interests Mora. She also has a practical reason to investigate the biochemistry of bone broth: The meat industry throws out most animal bones as waste. Says Mora, “I wanted to find a way to use them in a healthy way.”
Scientists Say: Peptide
Many Spanish dishes include bone broth. So Mora had a good idea of how to make it. She turned her lab into a kitchen and concocted a broth with only water and dry-cured ham bones. Most cooks flavor bone broths with vegetables. But Mora wasn’t looking for flavor. She was searching for protein bits known as peptides that had been released by the bones.
The long process of cooking broth breaks bone proteins into those peptides, which are short chains of amino acids. There are many different types of peptides. Some can help the body’s cardiovascular system, that heart and blood-transporting network. Such peptides can help block certain natural chemicals called enzymes that can increase blood pressure. When Mora finished cooking her broth, she analyzed what chemicals it now contained. The “interesting results,” she says, showed the heart-healthy peptides were there.
Her team described its findings online January 30 in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
