Bone Broth: Hot New Food Trend or Back to Food Basics?

Photo:islandvittles/Flickr/Creative Commons License

It's really not that hard to spot a "hot new food trend." Sure, you can go the route of physically crisscrossing the country, talking to restaurant owners, or getting hot tips from servers about what customers are ordering. But, really, that's unnecessary. All one needs to do is look at item prices and when things feel more than slightly off, do a little investigating.

When I happened upon the words "dropping up to $9 for a cup of meat-flavored water" in a write-up of a New York eatery, I had an inkling. When I expanded the search to find that same steaming cup being sold in places like Portland and Asheville, I knew. Bone broth is the hot new food trend for 2015.

So, um, why's that now?

First off, for the uninitiated, it makes sense to describe bone broth. Luckily, it's easy. It's just what it sounds like.

It's water that's simmered for long periods of time with a marrow-filled bone, which allows the flavor and nutrients to leach into the liquid. (In fact, to say it's an easy recipe is perhaps misusing the word "recipe." All one literally needs is a pot, a bone, water, time, and baby, you got yourself a broth!) Chic establishments -- like the place that charges $9 a cup -- raise the standard a bit by providing different variations, and allowing buyers to add things like garlic, ginger, mushroom teas, and actual bone marrow. Even then, the principle is essentially: Here's some meat water.

"We have always known about the benefits of bone marrow," said Vivienne Vella, co-owner of Soupure, an L.A.-based company that provides instructions and materials for soup-based cleanses. And yes, one of their offerings is a grass fed organic beef bone broth. "We did not know bone broths would become a fad."

Those aforementioned health benefits are a big reason why they're selling like hot cakes, albeit meat-flavored, watery ones. They're known as a good source of minerals and amino acids, due to the contents of the marrow seeping into the liquid. While there have yet to be studies that focus on the nutritional benefits of bone broth specifically, many nutritionists have given it their seal of approval, including Dr. Kaayla T. Daniel in a piece for Men's Journal:

These curative properties may resonate among the alternative medicine and diet community, and Vella seconds this. She suggests it's also a response to the trend of fad diets that call for an extremely regimented intake, which means keeping track of everything that goes into one's body. In being so focused on specific portions of the diet, these extreme diets may be leave the body deficient in vital areas.

"Why eat only raw foods? Why press out the fiber from our foods? Isn't fiber good for you? Why eat only a non-fat diet? Why eat only vegetarian?" Vella said. "We seem to think each food fad holds the key. Here's an idea: Just eat right and in moderation. Your body will do the rest."

Bone broth may also signal something else: A return to simplicity. There is something certainly enticing about the ease and straightforwardness that comes with making the product. "People are moving away from food trends and returning back to the basics," Vella said. She notes that neighborhood butchers are a thing of the past, and that artificial flavors have taken the place of real flavor. Making bone broth is a throwback to the old style of cooking. It's the food version of the vinyl resurgence; there's nothing more analog than stewing up some broth.

"Maybe our ancestors had it right," she said.