An Old Tradition Needed Today
Chicken soup has been a well-known folk remedy for the common cold and many of us recall our grandmothers and mothers preparing and providing it when we were small children with a cold or flu bug. So was grandma right in her thinking? She most certainly was! Here at The Woodlands Institute for Health and Wellness we are interested in getting everyone back to good old homemade meat broths and stocks. The reason lies in the fact that meat broths contain a large number of extremely nourishing nutrients in a very bio-available form. And it is no surprise that our grocery store stocks and broths are just not the same thing because industry food processing damages the broth and adds unnecessary and often harmful additives. Home-made broths contain many important minerals, amino acids and vitamins that are very soothing and healing to the digestive tract and the broths provide the essential building blocks for the rapidly growing cells of the gut lining. Broth is also very anti-inflammatory and aids in digestion for this reason. All of this supports a healthy gut, which is mission critical to overall health and wellness.
Broths made from any animal source including fish, chicken, goose, duck, venison, beef, pork or turkey, using bones, marrow, cartilage, joints and giblets are all ideal. If you have a stock pot or a Crockpot, you are ready to make stock! And please, let me urge you NOT to remove the fat content from the stock. We need this saturated animal fat for the healing process and immune function as well. Did you know that most saturated animal fats including beef, pork and lamb fat are actually only about 50% saturated fat while the remainder are mono and polyunsaturated fats? If you do remove it, then I hope you are planning to cook with it!
So as we shift into our coldest months, be thinking about homemade vegetable beef soup or chicken soup or a hearty nine-bean and ham soup and start out with stock made from scratch (see today’s recipe for instructions). Eat Well. Be Well
Reference: Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD. 2012