Episode #52 Make Peace with Food (Part 1) with Sam Blumenthal

Episode #56:

The Collagen Episode with Sam Blumenthal, RDN

There’s one substance that helps your skin, gut, and overall health: collagen. Collagen is a hot topic and one that’s been requested over and over by my audience, so here we are, bringing you everything you need to know on The Collagen Episode.

This week, we’re live in the kitchen, cooking you up a real treat with Sam Blumenthal RDN, an amazing chef and a licensed intuitive eating dietician. Whether you want to know about collagen supplements, naturally collagen-rich foods, or how collagen serves your gut health, you’re in the right place.

Tune in to discover the incredible power of collagen. We’re discussing how to start expanding your definition of what food means in your life, the history and science behind collagen, as well as the wonderful health benefits of consuming collagen and making it part of your day-to-day life.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER



What collagen is and why it’s the glue that holds our bodies together.



Why bone broth is hot right now, but has deeply meaningful historical origins.



The healing power of bone broth for our immune system.



What you need to know if you’re buying collagen supplements.



The truth about plant-based collagen.



How collagen interacts with our bodies and keeps us young.



Some amazing ways to get more collagen in your diet.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW



Sam Blumenthal: Instagram | TikTok



FOND Bone Broth



Virtuosa Vitamins

TRANSCRIPT

Sam: One of the most beautiful benefits I feel, in my experience, to preparing and consuming bone broth is truly its healing power on our immune system because about 70 to 80% of our entire immune system is located within our gut.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa the podcast with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 56, The Collagen Episode. A very special onsite cooking episode and interview with amazing chef and licensed intuitive eating dietician Sam Blumenthal RDN.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.

By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.

Dr. Crockett: I am so excited to see you all today and to bring to you one of the most requested topics that I've had this far on the show. I've got my lovely guest Sam Blumenthal with me today.

Sam: Hi.

Dr. Crockett: Welcome.

Sam: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Crockett: So now y'all are dying to know what we're talking about. It has to do with beauty and food and science and maybe even a little bit of surgery, although this is the show where we go beyond the scalpel, or where the scalpel doesn't reach.

Today we are talking about collagen. Yes, the collagen episode. I have had so many of you guys asking about collagen. We want to know about it for our skin, our overall health, people have asked me about supplements. We're going to go over a little bit of that. We're going to talk about specifically a natural source of collagen, bone broth.

Sam: In bone broth. Exactly.

Dr. Crockett: Which is a great topic for the fall. So y'all stay tuned, and I'm going to turn it over to Sam. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, and what you're doing here?

Sam: Awesome. So I'm Sam, I'm an intuitive eating dietitian. The way that I love to describe the work that I do is I really work to approach nutrition from a place of self-care.

Dr. Crockett: I love that.

Sam: Versus self-control. Now let that sink in for a sec.

Dr. Crockett: That needs to be like the little tagline.

Sam: It's really all about making eating decisions from a place of how do I want to feel in my body versus solely making eating decisions from a place of how do I want to look at my body?

Dr. Crockett: Wow, that's huge.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: So tell our listeners a little bit about what a dietitian is because I didn't even know the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist.

Sam: Yeah. So there are certain qualifications that a dietitian has to experience and train for, so to speak, before they're eligible to sit for their board exam.

Dr. Crockett: Oh, you take a board exam.

Sam: We do take a board exam. Yes. It's quite tricky but manageable. That's why I'm standing here today. So as a dietitian, we need 1,200 hours of supervised work experience.

Dr. Crockett: That’s a lot.

Sam: In the clinical setting, in the foodservice setting, and in the community setting. Once those are completed then you're eligible to sit for your boards.

Dr. Crockett: I should have known this. As a doctor, I should know the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist, and I never have. So.

Sam: It's never too late to learn.

Dr. Crockett: Never too late to learn apparently. So you guys may notice we are in a little different setting than we usually are. We're not in the studio upstairs. This is a sneak peek into what we do before the Dr. Crockett Show every episode, which is we have these amazing meals together and conversation and get to know our guests and each other and that's where the real energy is for the show. Then we cultivate what we're going to teach. Today.

Sam: We're doing a little bone broth.

Dr. Crockett: I know in the kitchen. I wanted to do this. So welcome. We're going to actually do this together.

Sam: Yeah. I think a really helpful piece to kind of get started with is kind of understanding what, or really expanding our definition of what food might mean in our lives. So traditionally, I feel that we hear a narrative that food is fuel, and food is just medicine. That's something you've heard about before.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, a few times.

Sam: Yeah. I believe those two things are absolutely true. Food can represent so much more than just fuel and medicine. I really believe that food can represent community, love, ritual, nostalgia, cultural exploration as well.

Dr. Crockett: You actually taught me that. We met about three years ago, kind of have our paths crossed in a kind of health retreat setting. You were the first one that really brought to my awareness the love that comes through food. I've started talking about that with my family like when we come together for traditional meals and holidays. It's amazing.

Sam: How has that transformed your experience with your family?

Dr. Crockett: It's made it not just sitting down and gobbling down the food. My kids are mostly grown. They're not always the most mindful, neither am I, but just having that awareness around the food when I'm cooking it and then coming in and out of the kitchen. I'm aware of the interaction and the love that's happening as the aromas are building. I always think back to oh yeah, that's a really cool thing.

Sam: That's so beautiful. I'm so honored to hear that our experience has kind of made its way into your day to day life and perhaps transformed what the eating experience might represent to you. Because at the end of the day, I truly believe that there is a huge difference and balance really between what it means to just feel full and what it means to feel fulfilled.

Dr. Crockett: Well, this is your website. This is your branding.

Sam: Yes, yeah. It truly goes beyond that as well. It's truly a mantra that I live by. Because I really believe that this idea of fulfillment as we are working in the kitchen today, it can also be explored outside of the realm of the kitchen.

So for our listeners or viewers, I do invite you to get curious about your definition of fulfillment because perhaps our fulfillment can exist beyond just the nutrition and beyond just food. Maybe we can find fulfillment within what experiences and activities, like here today, people, relationships, beautiful environments, and surroundings.

Dr. Crockett: Topher the dog.

Sam: And my dog, he's here with us today. He's very familiar with this mantra. Though I think without further ado.

Dr. Crockett: Oh so I had to just adjust one thing about balance because my audience already knows me as whole food plant based mostly vegan. Not crap vegan, real food vegan. So it may surprise some of you that I'm actually sitting here with a pile of meat bones.

It's just one of the few exceptions, I think, to nutrition when I think about healing and health and nutrition where I think this is a healthy place where animal products probably do play an important part in our diet. They don't have to. We're going to talk a little bit later about how collagen is formed and how our bodies used vegetables and other things to create collagen on our own.

Sam: Yes, yes.

Dr. Crockett: It doesn't have to be this, but I thought this was an amazing idea to do for the show. So why don't we start with the bones and start the process?

Sam: The history of bone broth? Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: The bones of it.

Sam: So I love it. I love it. The bones of it. So I'll be honest, the first time I ever heard of bone broth was probably within the last five or six years. The first time I ever heard about bone broth, I was just kind of scrolling through social media. I saw all these influencers posing with all this bone broth. I'm like okay, what's this hot new thing that everyone's talking about? The truth of the matter is I was half right because it's definitely hot but it's totally not new.

Dr. Crockett: Not at all.

Sam: Not at all. It is actually one of the most ancient recipes known to mankind. Our ancestors were making bone broth for centuries and centuries before us for a couple of reasons. The first reason was to really pay homage to that animal for dying. So truly expressing a sense of gratitude by utilizing every single part of that animal so nothing went to waste.

Dr. Crockett: I love that.

Sam: Yeah, it's kind of, I really feel that today. It's kind of a piece that we don't traditionally think about when it comes to preparing a meal or cooking.  Kind of looking at each ingredient as a whole and expressing gratitude for the earth, for the chef, for the farmer, and the sunshine. Yeah, absolutely.

The second reason was as hunters and gatherers, it was quite rare for our ancestors to go out on a hunt and bring back exactly enough food to feed an entire community and village, which is quite foreign to us today. Because as we've experienced, if we're running low on something, you just hop in the car, go over to the grocery store, HEB, get it, come back, and that's that. But it wasn't really the case back then.

So what they discovered was by taking bones, placing them in water at a very low simmer for a very long extended period of time, created this very nutrient dense and energizing and healing broth that we know and love today, which is bone broth.

Dr. Crockett: Awesome.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: So we've done a little bit of prep. What's the first step? What do we do?

Sam: So I think before we get into the what, I would love an opportunity to explain a little bit more of kind of the why, which is the collagen piece.

Dr. Crockett: Oh yeah. Let's talk about the collagen. So I think this is really fascinating from the science and specifically a surgeon perspective. So I'm a gynecologic surgeon. As part of the work that I do, I do a lot of work on pelvic prolapse. It’s not sexy food talk, but basically bladder’s falling. That's a real problem with women. It has a lot to do with collagen.

Patients are always asking me besides just what can I take to make my hair, nails, and skin healthier? What can I do to heal better from surgery? They're asking why am I having problems with wrinkles or prolapse issues where things sag? How can I be healthier? What should I eat? What should I take? So we have these conversations about collagen. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what collagen is anyway.

Sam: Great, great question and great starting point. So collagen actually comes from the Greek word cola, and that means glue. So essentially, collagen is the glue.

Dr. Crockett: That holds us all together.

Sam: That holds us all together. Yeah. Collagen itself is the primary structural protein component in the entire human body. Our entire bodies are made of collagen. Our hair, our skin, our nails, our tendons, our bones, our cartilage, our ligaments. Our entire GI tract as well is completely lined with collagen.

Dr. Crockett: I did not know that.

Sam: One of the most beautiful benefits, I feel, in my experience to preparing and consuming bone broth is truly it's healing power on our immune system. Because about 70 to 80% of our entire immune system is located within our gut.

Dr. Crockett: You know, that has become such an important topic. That's something that I've really only learned in the last couple of years since I started looking beyond surgeries. The immune system and also our psychiatric, serotonin, dopamine, our mental wellness.

Sam: Our gut is our second brain.

Dr. Crockett: It is. It's crazy. So we’re going to feed our second brain some healthy bone broth.

Sam: We are. What's so interesting and fascinating is that the human body, we naturally make collagen.

Dr. Crockett: We do. We don't just have to eat it.

Sam: No, we naturally make it.

Dr. Crockett: Our bodies do it.

Sam: But when we turn about 25 years old.

Dr. Crockett: That was a few years ago.

Sam: That collagen production starts to slow down a little bit. That's where we start to notice some of the signs or concerns that perhaps your patients are coming to you about. So what I find to be so beautiful about bone broth itself is that we have an opportunity to prepare a beautiful natural remedy almost from the most immediate source. Also playing a part in the kitchen and being a part of this whole process can really tie into and nourish that sense of community and connection and ritual and nostalgia even.

Dr. Crockett: Tie into our ancestors and honoring the traditions.

Sam: Exactly.

Dr. Crockett: So I think the time thing is a really important piece here. This is not going to be done by the end of the show.

Sam: No. I mean if y'all are willing to watch us sit here for 24 hours then yeah, but not really. This is really a process that takes between 16 and 24 hours at a minimum.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah.

Sam: I'll be totally transparent with you. The first time I learned that, I felt very overwhelmed. It felt like.

Dr. Crockett: How am I going to do that?

Sam: We have things to do, right. It felt like a very daunting and overwhelming process until I started to find this really beautiful parallel in honoring the cooking time. Because, as you'll see here, we have our bones. We have our mirepoix. We have our spices. We have our water. We have our pot back here. Towards the end of our cooking experience today, our goal is to get all of these things in a pot.

Dr. Crockett: Assembled.

Sam: Assembled. You can almost imagine at this moment, once that's done, it's going to feel and look a little messy and chaotic. If you haven't been able to tell, that's my mind 90% of the time.

Dr. Crockett: Well, I'm a transformation expert. So we can help you with that.

Sam: Thank you. I'll reach out to you after the show. So what I find to be so beautiful about making bone broth is it can almost represent each of our paths to achieving that transformation and clarity. Because truly, the goal of bone broth is to create something that's clear. Because with bone broth, we can sit and enjoy it from a cup, but we can also use it any recipe that calls for a liquid.

So some of my personal favorite ways to actually utilize bone broth is if I'm preparing quinoa, I'll use it as that liquid to absorb flavor and collagen. Cooking rice.

Dr. Crockett: Yummy.

Sam: Adding to mashed potatoes.

Dr. Crockett: My favorite.

Sam: Adding it to a pasta sauce or even adding a few other ingredients to even change it up. Perhaps we transform it to a pho. Maybe we create a creamy tomato basil soup. Those are just a couple of ideas.

Dr. Crockett: Ramen.

Sam: Oh, ramen. Yeah. So the reason I say this is our goal is to create something that is clear. Each of our individual paths to healing doesn't happen like that.

Dr. Crockett: It takes time to get clear.

Sam: It truly takes time for that very slow and low simmer, to skim any of the impurities that might rise to the top, to continue to filter out any of the, for lack of a better word, gunk that might just be rising to the top, to create something that is quite beautiful and clear. So I started to reframe the process of preparing a bone broth from something that might feel kind of scary or overwhelming or daunting into something quite nourishing beyond even the vitamin, mineral, and kind of like nutrient element of it. How can it nourish us in a spiritual sense?

Dr. Crockett: That’s really deep. It's beautiful.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: So from a medical perspective, a lot of times we put patients on a clear liquid diet, especially before surgery or people have gut surgery, which is not what I do, but intestinal surgery. They’ll be on clear liquids. So we choose clear liquids because the gunk is not in there. So it's better. It’s easily absorbed through the gut wall, right.

So in a clear liquid diet is anything you can see through. So a clear, clarified bone broth certainly is a really great choice if you are doing your clear liquid diet the night before a surgery that I'm doing. Or if your surgeon, your doctor says, you need to be on a clear liquid diet. This is a nutrient packed great option for that.

Sam: Yeah, I love that. What I love about the language that you've used to describe this is kind of the nutrient packed, nutrient dense. A lot of my work as an intuitive eating dietitian is really working to remove the morality from what it is.

Dr. Crockett: That’s such a hard thing.

Sam: It is. It's so deeply ingrained in our culture. So you'll notice that throughout our process today. I'm not going to use words like good or bad. I do believe some foods can help our bodies feel good. Some foods might make our bodies feel not so good.

Dr. Crockett: Or work harder.

Sam: Yeah, though food itself holds no inherent good and moral value. What if all food was emotionally equivalent, even if it was not nutritionally equivalent?

Dr. Crockett: That is a really great point. When we talk about the life coach concepts, we constantly talk about the neutrality of circumstances. This is one that's really big, difficult neutrality for most of my patients.

Sam: Yeah. I think a very important piece before we do start preparing this at home is maybe by watching this video, you feel inspired, our guests feel inspired to prepare this at home. It can be likely that there are moments where we might not have the time, the energy, the tool, or even the resources to prepare a bone broth at home. So almost always, the following question is can I just pick it up from the grocery store?

Dr. Crockett: Yeah.

Sam: What do you think?

Dr. Crockett: I get that question all the time.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: So here's what I learned from you.

Sam: Yeah, please tell me.

Dr. Crockett: I learned that you can, but you have to be careful what you buy because sometimes when you're buying something that's labeled as collagen in the grocery store, it's had all the good stuff processed out of it. So there are two that I have here that I was going to share today that are my two favorites for running another grocery store. I think you taught me about this one, which is, I ordered this off of Amazon because it's frozen, and you can get all different kinds of broth from them. There are some vegan options that they have too.

Sam: We’ll talk about that too in a moment.

Dr. Crockett: That'd be awesome. Then this one is really cool. The brand name is FOND. This one comes with spices in it. So they have five or six different spices, really high quality broth, really good stuff. So I think your point about having compassion on yourself and not having to do everything like the right way or the only way is a really beneficial thought for our audience to hear.

Sam: Yeah, I feel at the end of the day, any kind of nourishment is still self-care. So, again, if you're not in the space to create bone broth at home, go to the grocery store.

Dr. Crockett: Get some bone broth.

Sam: You can get some bone broth. The fact of the matter might be that maybe that bone broth is a little less nutrient dense than one that you can make at home. That is okay. We deserve to invite in a lot of that self-compassion for any circumstance outside of our control that might get in the way of allowing a similar process of 16 to 24 hours. Though, if this experience is of value to you, perhaps we carve out the time to do that. We'll talk about storage as well because you can do this once and have a whole bunch of it for months on end.

So I think this kind of is a perfect opportunity to begin preparing. So one of the biggest questions that I get when it comes to preparing a bone broth is what is the best kind of bone? I really want it to come down to what is accessible for the consumer and who's preparing that bone broth. So if you can find beef bones, chicken bones. You can use lamb bones. You can use.

Dr. Crockett: Really anything.

Sam: Any kind of bone. Any kind of animal that has bone, tendon, ligaments, cartilage, skin can make a bone broth.

Dr. Crockett: Awesome. So today we're using beef femurs that I picked up from the butcher yesterday.

Sam: Yeah. You'll see that there's quite a bit of marrow. That's going to contribute to a lot of collagen as well. Something very specific about these bones that you'll see here is that they're roasted.

Dr. Crockett: Right. We roasted them before.

Sam: Yeah. Why was that?

Dr. Crockett: I don't know. That's a great question. Why?

Sam: This is a great opportunity.

Dr. Crockett: Because it tastes better?

Sam: Because it tastes better. So we're getting this like nice caramelization on the bones themselves. This is going to contribute to a really rich depth of flavor. It's not necessary, but it would be something I would recommend if you're really looking to get something incredibly flavorful and comforting and heartwarming as well.

So ideally, we want to start off with about three pounds of bones for about one gallon of water. I like to use that as a guideline rather than a rule we have to follow. That's just kind of like a nice, sweet spot to start. So once we have our bones roasted, by the way in the oven at 425 for as long as it takes. I say that because depending.

Dr. Crockett: Bones are different sizes.

Sam: Exactly, right. These are a little bit thicker. I drizzled a little bit of a high heat cooking oil. We used avocado oil today. If we were using chicken bones that are a little bit more brittle, maybe the cooking time can be about 15 to 20 minutes. These were in the oven for about 40 to 45 minutes to get that nice caramelization. The next thing we have is our mirepoix.

Dr. Crockett: Mire what?

Sam: Mirepoix. Yeah. M-I-R-E-P-O-I-X.

Dr. Crockett: Okay.

Sam: It is, I want you to think of it as kind of the Holy Trinity of French cooking. It's like your standard soup base so to speak. So traditionally, that's going to be our celery, our carrots, and our onion. But I want you to take note on some nuanced uniqueness we see here. What do you notice about some of these?

Dr. Crockett: It’s got skin and roots and they're not perfect.

Sam: Yes. That's kind of the goal. Any scrap that you have, that you might be collecting throughout the week, or if you're not collecting it, I'd recommend you start saving it in like a little Ziploc bag. You can throw it in your freezer to really use the odds and ends of absolutely everything because this is essentially the garbage pit of melting nutrition. So with that, we have our onions, our celery, and carrot.

Dr. Crockett: And red pepper.

Sam: Red bell pepper. So red bell pepper is a little addition here because we don't even have to stop just at our kind of Holy Trinity. I like to add in some other ingredients as well. You'll notice what this red bell pepper, let's see, we'll find it, but it is the center including the seeds.

Dr. Crockett: Oh, okay, everything's going.

Sam: Everything is going in because we're straining. Here we go. We're straining everything at the end anyway. So I don't see a.

Dr. Crockett: Oh, I have to show them the strainer. Because they're not going to get to see this. So at the end, y’all check this out.

Sam: But there's a must. What when you're straining this, put a bowl in your sink. It obviously makes sense. There was a time where I didn't, and I just poured all of my bone broth liquid in the strainer, and it went down the drain. 24 hours down the drain.

Dr. Crockett: Oh no. So bowl in the sink. When we're done, that's how we're going to strain it. You're not going to get to see that part but I wanted them to see the strainer.

Sam: So funny. So if you want to go ahead, would you like to add in our mirepoix here.

Dr. Crockett: Sure.

Sam: So we have literally the stems, the skins, odds, ends. We want it all. Again, we don't have to stop there. One of my favorite secret ingredients I like to add is the core or an entire apple.

Dr. Crockett: Yum. So we have a.

Sam: Honey crisp apple.

Dr. Crockett: Honey crisp. Oh, they're so yummy in the fall.

Sam: I believe that just adds a very kind of like subtle floral undertone to the broth. So the choice is totally yours. Some other things that you can add are egg shells.

Dr. Crockett: Egg shells?

Sam: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Crockett: Wow.

Sam: So it's not in terms of flavor, but you get a little bit of calcium making it more nutrient dense. In the membrane of egg shells, some research is showing that there's a certain type of collagen called collagen type 10. There's over 20 different kinds of collagen, which I think is a whole series of podcasts later/

Dr. Crockett: Future episodes.

Sam: Future episodes. But what some research is showing about the membrane on the inside of eggshells is it can really help to support nerve function.

Dr. Crockett: Wow.

Sam: So throughout the week when you're making your scrambled eggs if that's something that you do at home, you can save those egg shells and just throw them in the pot.

Dr. Crockett: Because we strain it out.

Sam: Exactly.

Dr. Crockett: Cool.

Sam: Some other ideas, jalapenos. You can use the little cutie peels, like clementines.

Dr. Crockett: Oh, orange peels.

Sam: Ginger root as well, turmeric root if you'd like to. Dehydrated mushrooms if you'd like to for a little bit more of an umami munch. Those are just a couple ideas.

Dr. Crockett: Awesome, cool. Well now what?

Sam: Now we have our spices. Okay, so what do you notice about this garlic?

Dr. Crockett: I was dreading getting the garlic because I hate peeling it. Then all you did was whack it open and throw everything in.

Sam: If it doesn't come apart, oh no, it's coming apart. But if it doesn't come apart for you at home, you just throw the whole thing in there. I like to slice off the top a little bit just to expose a little bit more of that flavor. Because, again, the 16 to 24 hours that this is cooking, it's going to get nice and soft and flavorful.

Dr. Crockett: We can throw all this in too.

Sam: All of it in.

Dr. Crockett: All of this stuff. Yeah, I was like here, I have some precut, pre-diced garlic, and Sam's like oh no. I want the real one that you got. All right, I'm just going to mention something about my nails real quick because this is important. So my nails look really awful today y'all. Don't look too closely to them.

I refuse to wear fake nails because the reason I have crappy looking nails today is because I decided after a good 10 years to quit wearing fake ones and to let my own nails grow out because my collagen has gotten stronger since I've become whole foods plant based. My hair has never looked like this. The base of my nails is finally not so brittle. So they look bad while they're growing out, but they're going to be strong and beautiful. So we're just owning the in between transition today.

Sam: We're owning the between transition. I love that. After hearing you mentioned that the plant based piece, before we get into our spices, I would love to talk about plant based collagen.

Dr. Crockett: Yes.

Sam: Is there such a thing as plant based collagen?

Dr. Crockett: No.

Sam: No? Why is that?

Dr. Crockett: Because collagen is an animal protein.

Sam: Yeah, it comes from bones and tendons. Like if there is a plant that has.

Dr. Crockett: Bones and tendons and ligaments.

Sam: Call me up, let me know. But no, traditionally, if we see plant based collagen what this is really describing is that there are certain plant based ingredients that can almost promote the collagen production that started to kind of go to sleep on us.

Dr. Crockett: I wasn't going to mention this, but we are going to mention it. So I haven't really promoted this very much yet but I have a vitamin line. It's called Virtuoso Vitamins. You can find it through DrCrockett.com. Our whole philosophy about vitamins is that we should get most of our nutrients from our food by eating a broad whole food type of diet.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: But where we need supplementation, that's what we have on the site. So it's not a whole lot of things, but one of them is a collagen builder. So it's not a collagen supplement. It is ingredients that help build healthy, strong nails and healing. But there's even something better than that, which is starting with the raw food.

Sam: Yes, right. So the way that I like to think of these builders, to use your language, if our collagen is like sleeping on us when we're 25, I want you to think of these collagen builders as like little alarm clocks waking up our collagen. These are the ABCs of collagen production.

Dr. Crockett: ABC.

Sam: ABC. A is for vitamin A. These are your orange and yellow fruits and veggies. B is your bulbs and berries. So your bulbs can come in the form of onions, garlic, shallot, fennel, then your berries, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries. Then vitamin C. Vitamin C can be found in dark leafy greens, citrus, berries, and red bell pepper. A serving of red bell pepper has more vitamin C than a serving of oranges.

Dr. Crockett: No way. That’s astonishing.

Sam: Beyond just flavor and just making use of this red bell pepper, there is another reason or intention that we're adding the red bell pepper to this bone broth. That's because for our body to best absorb collagen, it likes to be paired with vitamin C.

Dr. Crockett: I did not know that before today.

Sam: So now we're getting our vitamin C through the form of our red bell pepper to ensure that when we consume this bone broth.

Dr. Crockett: That it has a carrier to help it in.

Sam: Exactly.

Dr. Crockett: Cool.

Sam: If you're making this at home and you don't have vitamin C to add directly into the bone broth, no stress as long as we're getting vitamin C throughout the week. Again, that can be in the form of your dark leafy greens, your berries, and your citrus foods. So it doesn't necessarily have to be in here, but we're killing two birds with one stone today. We were going to go ahead and add in our spices.

Dr. Crockett: Okay.

Sam: So we have our peppercorn. Do you want to add that in? These are just like recommendations. The whole thing. Yeah, these are like recommendations. These are kind of my, what we're preparing today is what I like to call my base recipe. So if you have other spices or herbs at home, feel free to add them in. Again, I try to keep it pretty neutral across the board because I want to be able to use this as my home base to come back to, to use this as a liquid in lots of things.

Dr. Crockett: You mentioned that we're not using salt.

Sam: Correct, yes.

Dr. Crockett: We're going to keep it unsalted so that you can use it in foods that may not want that much salt. Salt it when you use it.

Sam: Then, of course, like each of us have like the discernment to say okay at the very end after it's all prepared, add like three of them in there. After it’s all prepared.

Dr. Crockett: Bay leaf.

Sam: You can always add salt to taste right. So in if anyone wants to add salt while it's cooking, there's nothing really wrong about that.

Dr. Crockett: About that either.

Sam: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. I love rosemary. That's my favorite herb. I think it out does basil. I think it out does basil for me.

Sam: Especially in the fall time. It's a little bit more fall. Mint, for me, is more summer. This is a little bit more fall.

Dr. Crockett: Is that it?

Sam: Oh, we do have one more thing, a little bit of a lemon that we have right here. So the intention for adding a lemon is not really for flavor. We need a little bit more of acidity, whether that's coming in from a splash of apple cider vinegar or a little squeeze of lemon. This is to help make the minerals from the bones be more bioavailable.

Dr. Crockett: Oh, okay.

Sam: So this can be some of the calcium and some of the phosphorus.

Dr. Crockett: So that our bodies can absorb it better.

Sam: Exactly.

Dr. Crockett: Lovely.

Sam: To be honest, if you don't have apple cider vinegar at home, like I just want to remind you I don't think our ancestors were trying to find Whole Foods to get some apple cider vinegar. So it's not like a make or break thing. I just noticed that we had a little bit of lemon back there. Because we're using or we have like a little bit left of the side here, I have no problem adding that in. If we were to add in a little bit more or like the entire lemon, it's going to taste a little bit more bitter. Just a little bit of a lemon. You can always just throw the rind in there.

Dr. Crockett: Okay.

Sam: Now we'll add the water.

Dr. Crockett: Water.

Sam: Oh, this looks so beautiful.

Dr. Crockett: This is amazing. Okay, one thing I want to ask you about is one time when I did bone broth, I cooked it too long, and it got this funky flavor to it. Like the overcooked vegetable flavor. Like how do you, you know what I'm talking about?

Sam: I'm curious, what kind of bones were you using?

Dr. Crockett: They were probably turkey because I did it after Thanksgiving dinner.

Sam: So a key point here when it comes to making a bone broth is really not only the summertime, but your bone to water ratio with very little meat on the bones.

Dr. Crockett: Oh, okay.

Sam: If there was quite a bit of meat, the longer it simmers, that liquid is going to smell and taste a little rancid.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah.

Sam: So traditionally, meat fibers have more pro-inflammatory properties and bones themselves have more anti-inflammatory properties. So, again, that's really not a matter of good or bad. We need a little bit of inflammation. If I were to walk off the set here and trip and scrape my knee, I need a little bit of inflammation to my knee to help repair. Right.

So the reason I say this is it can be very beneficial to just ensure that you don't have to literally work your fingers to the bone to get all of the meat off. But if you do leave a lot of it on there, it's going to make it less anti-inflammatory.

Dr. Crockett: And more soup and you can't cook it as long.

Sam: Correct. Then if you do cook it for the recommended time that we've talked about, it's going to taste rancid like through your experience.

Dr. Crockett: Okay, cool. Now what?

Sam: Now we're going to put a lid on the top.

Dr. Crockett: Here's the lid. Got a lid.

Sam: Beautiful.

Dr. Crockett: Okay. Then it goes on the stove.

Sam: Goes on the stove.

Dr. Crockett: Do we have to boil it first?

Sam: Typically, when that's done, it's to kind of speed up the cooking process. But because we're letting it simmer for 16 to 24 hours, you can just put it on low right away. Then throughout the cooking process too, there might be a little bit of evaporation from the liquid. So as often as you can when you're home just kind of giving a little peek and babysitting it, adding a little bit more water as you need. We want that water to be right above the bone and vegetable line like you see.

Dr. Crockett: Okay awesome.

Sam: Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: This has been super cool.

Sam: Yeah. You're so welcome.

Dr. Crockett: Great. I wanted to let our viewers know a couple of things. One is, is it okay to post the recipe as a download?

Sam: Absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: So we will post links to everything that we referenced on the show, there'll be links down below for you on the YouTube channel and on the podcast page. Then let's hear about where our viewers can find you.

Sam: Yeah, so right now I'm on Instagram and on TikTok, fun little bite size mindful eating and intuitive eating tips. So on Instagram, you can find me at Fulfilled and Full.RD for registered dietitian. On TikTok it's just Fulfilled and Full.

Dr. Crockett: Okay. Oh, I almost forgot the best part.

Sam: Oh. So, bam. 24 hours just happened like that. Now we’ll explain what this is. What do we have here?

Dr. Crockett: So this is actually a plant based, and it is not a different kind of bone broth. It is a plant based broth. It does have some bulbs in it. It has mushrooms and garlic and ginger and a little bit of olive oil. They're shitake mushrooms. So I made this earlier today, and I thought we would have a little toast.

Sam: Cheers. Oh my goodness. I taste the mushroom.

Dr. Crockett: It's so yummy. All right, you guys. Well maybe that will be another show when I show you that, but that's all we got today.

Sam: So good.

Dr. Crockett: Thank you for joining us for our collagen episode. See you next week.

Sam: Bye y’all.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please  subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT