Mumsday Sunday - Bones

 

Bones : The big health ‘secret’ not enough people are talking about.

A couple of years ago bones weren’t really on my cooking radar. Sure I boiled up the occasional roast chicken carcass for stock or soup, but I can’t say I actively tried to incorporate bones into my diet on a  regular basis. I had no idea my diet was lacking in something that could give me a significant health boost, because no one really talks that much about bones do they? It wasn’t until I started working with Helen of Nourish-ed that I began to hear bones discussed in a way that elevated them to the top of the nutritional pops.

I was intrigued. I started reading about bones and this mystical ‘bone broth’ and I was actually a little stunned by what I discovered. Because bones are absolutely magical things. Transformative in their health benefits. They should not be reserved for special occasions, or the classic ‘chicken soup for a cold’. Why had no one told me this before? I look back now at the missed opportunities, the times I reached over the bony cuts, to the lean diced meat and I wish I’d been a bit more bone-savvy earlier.

What to know more? Read this article by Sally Fallon ‘Broth is Beautiful’. Now I think about including broth and stock in meals as seriously as I think about including greens. We often have a jug of fresh stock in the fridge and I use it liberally. Soup, Bolognese sauce, and risotto are all excellent ways to get stock into the family meal with the major perk that it adds heaps of flavour. The other way to go is to slow cook a casserole /curry with a bone-in cut.

So, has it really made a difference? I wrote this post called the sleep deprivation diet a little while ago, which talks about how run down I was in the early years of parenting (regularly needing antibiotics for acute infections etc) and now, I’m still chronically sleep deprived (more so than ever),  but I’m definitely healthier – and of all the changes I’ve made to my diet and lifestyle, my feeling is that the inclusion of bones is the one that’s had the biggest impact.

Amy Black, Munch contributor - On the monkey trail