Preface

In 1908, a Japanese researcher isolated a new taste substance from the seaweed kombu. He noted that the substance had a singular taste, different from sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. He called the taste umami. The chemical he discovered was free glutamic acid, which when combined with sodium gave the most pleasing umami taste. That substance is called monosodium glutamate, or MSG.

Within a year, a new company called Ajinomoto began manufacturing MSG for the food industry, and it was MSG that made possible the profound changes to the Western diet that occurred during the twentieth century, especially after World War II. That’s because monosodium glutamate in its many guises—MSG, hydrolyzed protein, autolyzed protein, yeast extract, soy protein isolate—gave the food industry an inexpensive way to imitate the taste of broth.

As early as 1735, chefs had made dried bouillon in the form of tablets, cubes, and granules by dehydrating meat stock with vegetables, fat, salt, and seasonings. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chefs and cooks made frequent use of these homemade extracts.

MSG allowed the cheap and profitable industrial production of bouillon cubes starting in the early 1900s. Oxo cubes, popular since 1910 in Britain, contain very little extract of beef stock today; in fact they gain more flavor from the monosodium glutamate than the actual dried beef stock. The ingredients listed on the label are wheat flour, salt, yeast extract, cornflour, colouring, flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate), beef fat, flavouring, dried beef bonestock, sugar, onion, pepper extract.

Wyler’s Chicken Flavored Bouillon Cubes contain no dried bone stock at all; in fact, the ingredients list is a nightmarish collection of additives: Salt, Sugar, Mechanically Separated Cooked Ground Chicken Meat, Sodium Bicarbonate, Monosodium Glutamate, Hydrolyzed Corn Gluten, Corn Maltodextrin, Onion Powder, Chicken Fat, Hydrolyzed Corn Gluten Protein, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil and Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Autolyzed Yeast Extract, Water, Garlic Powder, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate, Dextrose, Cooked Chicken Powder, Natural Chicken Flavor, Hydrolyzed Soy Protein, Calcium Silicate, Gelatin, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor, Turmeric, Corn Syrup Solids, Spice, Modified Cornstarch, Silicon Dioxide, Diacetyl (Flavor), Artificial Flavor, Tricalcium Phosphate, Alpha Tocopherols (Antioxidant), Corn Oil, BHA (Preservative), Propyl Gallate, Citric Acid, BHT (Preservative).

In addition to monosodium glutamate, at least three other ingredients in Wyler’s cubes—hydrolyzed corn gluten protein, autolyzed yeast extract, and hydrolyzed soy protein—are sources of free glutamic acid or one of its salts. Even “natural flavor” can contain MSG.

MSG made possible the proliferation of new products that flooded the supermarket shelves after World War II. Manufacturers used it in canned bouillon, canned soups, and canned stews—allowing the food processing industry to imitate for pennies the natural flavor of carefully prepared broth. The earliest frozen TV dinners featured turkey with gravy—not gravy made with nourishing turkey stock but a gravylike substance comprised of water, thickeners, emulsifiers, artificial colorings, and artificial flavorings, mostly MSG. Canned spaghetti sauce was no longer an insipid imitation of the real thing but, thanks to MSG, something that had a seductive savory taste.

Whether MSG poses health problems is a matter of debate—the industry insists that MSG is a minor bother only for the rare sensitive individual and has no long-term consequences for the majority. But independent researchers are not so sure, citing neurological problems as the long-term consequence of this excitatory substance, especially in children and the elderly. Rarely mentioned is the fact that MSG is used to induce obesity in laboratory animals. Has the flood of MSG-laden foods contributed to today’s epidemic of obesity? It is a question that needs to be explored.

Whatever the health hazards of MSG, one thing is certain: The use of MSG in our food has allowed the eclipse of nourishing broth, something that tradition tells us is good for us, something that science indicates should be in our diet on a daily basis. Before processed foods, cooks used broth to make soups, stews, sauces, and gravies; broth made these foods taste good, and everyone enjoyed the health benefits whether they were aware of them or not. MSG and its many cousins used in processed food have allowed cooks to forget valuable broth-making skills. One can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup makes a casserole—skill in making cream sauce with chicken broth not required; a bouillon cube or two flavors the stew, so the stew gets eaten without the benefits of cartilage-rich broth. Gravy is produced by adding water to a packet of powder—which contains an overwhelming amount of MSG. Packets of flavoring put MSG into homemade meat loaf, chili, and spaghetti sauce. With instant broth taste in packets and cans, who needs to pull out the big broth pot and fill it with bones?

MSG quickly made its way into restaurants in the form of soup bases. When you see “homemade soup” on the menu, ask the server whether it is made in house from bones or from a base. Most likely the answer will be: “We make our soup in house from a base.” That base is not nourishing broth but a canned powder, highly flavored with MSG. MSG is also in many of the sauces, salad dressings, gravies, and “au jus” garnishes that people relish when they have a restaurant meal, often waking up with a dry mouth and headache the next morning.

Fortunately, the Western world is reembracing real food and traditional cooking—witness the explosion of interest in traditional, ethnic, and local foods. And nothing characterizes ancestral food as much as nourishing broth, the simmering stockpot, and broth-based soups, stews, gravies, and sauces.

And just in time! Today we are witnessing an epidemic of chronic disease that threatens to unhinge our modern world—cancer, arthritis, allergies, digestive problems, mental disorders, and even new types of life-threatening infectious illness. Bone broth, rich in the elements of cartilage, collagen, and healing amino acids, can provide protection from these ailments, can serve as an important element in recovery, and can nourish and enrich our lives in many ways.

This book provides many important reasons for putting the stockpot back on our stoves and, even more important, making broth-based soup the basis of meals in hospitals, nursing homes, military canteens, schools, and prisons. Unfortunately, soldiers, students, convalescents, and inmates today are fed the cheapest of industrial foods—imitation broth, soups based on artificial ingredients, fast foods loaded with industrial chemicals, Meals Ready-to-Eat (MREs), and “nutrition” concoctions in cans. Thus the nation gets sicker, academic standards decline, behavior degenerates, and recidivism soars.

Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but the many contributors to this book have greatly enriched its content with their testimonials and recipes. Dr. Kaayla Daniel is uniquely qualified to pull together all the science we have on broth. While studies on broth itself are lacking, we know a lot about broth’s components. Modern science provides the explanation for the varied and worldwide traditions that extol broth’s healing effects, and the many testimonials we have collected over the years indicate a wide range of conditions that broth can ameliorate or prevent.

“The most important piece of equipment in any kitchen,” said Francis Pottenger Jr., MD, “is the stockpot.” Dr. Pottenger was the author of a seminal article describing how gelatin-rich broth helps digestion. He recommended the stockpot as a gift for couples getting married.

I described Dr. Pottenger’s 1938 article on gelatin (published in the American Journal of Digestive Diseases) and some of the traditions about broth in my cookbook Nourishing Traditions; the book, first published in 1996, piqued the public’s interest in the health benefits of broth. I also made sure that information about broth was posted on the website of our nutrition information foundation, the Weston A. Price Foundation, founded in 1999.

During the ensuing years, interest in broth increased, and many homemakers and cooks discovered the satisfaction of making broth and employing it as the foundational ingredient in soups, stews, sauces, and gravies—or using broth therapeutically for colds, flu, digestive disorders, skin diseases, and joint problems. Many of these cooks have developed unique ways of making broth, not to mention many delicious broth-based recipes, and their discoveries form an important part of this book, allowing us to provide not only the scientific principles behind broth but also broth’s practical applications. Those who have contributed recipes show us that it is easy to incorporate broth making into any lifestyle—from a simple slow cooker chicken broth prepared by the busy parent to a long-simmered consommé prepared by the gourmet chef.

We hope that this book will provide inspiration for making broth, because there’s more than just love in that pot of chicken soup we prepare; there’s much that will heal the ailments we suffer from. All this, and it tastes good too.

—Sally Fallon Morell, President,
The Weston A. Price Foundation