Does bone broth
give you calcium?

The full narration of the video.

After a whole night of simmering, the calcium is still in the bones. The broth turns milky white and smells wonderful, and many families serve it to kids and grandparents for calcium. Bones are packed with calcium, so why won't it come out?

Picture a bone as a piggy bank that's been welded shut. The coins packed inside are the calcium. But this bank has no slot. However long it boils, the pot is only shaking it. Shake it all night, and only a few coins fall out.

When people measured it, a hundred milliliters of bone broth held just two to four milligrams of calcium, about the same as tap water. The same amount of milk has a hundred and four milligrams, more than twenty times as much. An adult needs eight hundred milligrams a day. Getting that from broth alone would take at least twenty liters, more than a big office water jug.

Then why is the broth so white? The white is fat. Fat from the marrow and meat gets beaten by the boiling water into tiny droplets, and a pot full of them looks white. So whiter broth usually means more fat, not more calcium.

Why won't the calcium come out? Because it isn't sitting in the bone as loose grains. It's locked together with phosphorus into a rock-hard mineral called hydroxyapatite. The hard outer layer of your teeth is mostly the same stuff.

Your teeth sit in saliva for decades without melting, so one night in a pot won't dissolve a bone either. The coins are the calcium. The welded-shut bank is that mineral. What can pry the bank open a little is acid.

In one lab test, making the broth more acidic pulled out more than ten times as much calcium. But to really draw the calcium out, you'd have to swap the water for a pot of vinegar, and nobody could drink that. Simmering longer adds only a little calcium, while fat and purines pile up faster.

If you have gout or high blood fats, go easy on long-simmered broth, and follow your doctor's advice. For calcium, pick foods where it's already loose and your body can reach it: milk, yogurt, cheese, and tofu. One 250-milliliter carton of milk has about two hundred sixty milligrams, as much as twenty-odd bowls of bone broth.

Enjoy bone broth for its flavor and warmth, just don't count on it for calcium. Want to see how tightly the calcium is locked in? Rinse a chicken bone, soak it in a bowl of white vinegar, cover it and wait a week. Take it out, and the bone bends like rubber. The vinegar slowly carried the calcium away.

How many hours does your family usually simmer bone broth?