Can you have treats and lower inflammation, while healing your digestive tract at the same time? Absolutely. I have written two downloadable cookbooks that provide more than 100 gut safe options to sooth and comfort body and soul.
Here is just one example of how you creatively combine one of nature’s most healing foods with one of its tastiest.
Bone broth hot cocoa!
Benefits of bone broth.
You may or may not have heard of bone broth. You can make it yourself easily by boiling bones in water with a few tablespoons of vinegar. It has become so popular that there are many brands that sell “homemade broth”. They tend to be more expensive than the off-the shelf, boxed bone broth, which has far fewer nutrients because of the way it was prepared. The secret to good broth is how long you cook it. Making it yourself is the best option for your belly and wallet.
I make mine in an Instant Pot by filling it with water (about 4 quarts), adding 2 pounds of bones and 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar. I press the soup button and 2 hours later I have broth. Couldn’t be simpler than that.
Broth is full of minerals, amino acids and nutrients from bones and its gelatinous nature serves as a healing balm for sealing the gut lining.
When there’s inflammation in the gut from overgrowths, pathogens, stress or diet, little holes can form in the gut lining. This can lead to food sensitivities as food particles leak into the blood stream where they don’t belong.
Adding broth to a gut healing protocol can support healing in many ways. Not only does it help repair the lining but it remineralising the body and adds easy to absorb nutrients like amino acids. Amino acids are not always broken down and extracted from proteins when stomach acid is low, but the body doesn’t have to work as hard to digest the broth. The aminos are highly bio available.
Broth is also good for the health and appearance of hair, skin and nails.
I use broth to make stews and soups. But it can also be sipped from a steaming mug.
Here’s another tasty and “secretive” way to enjoy it. Secretive because you really can’t taste the broth. It tastes like a chocolatey treat.
Is chocolate healthy?
Cocoa is a prebiotic food and a polyphenol. That means it feeds beneficial bacteria. It’s the sugar in chocolate that makes it unhealthy. But cocoa powder is lower in fat and is sugar free. This recipe uses a healthier sweetener in a smaller amount.
Some people who are sensitive to chocolate can swap it for carob powder instead. Carob is also a prebiotic food but it’s higher in FODMAPs, so it may bother some folks with SIBO.
Carob is naturally sweet and I combined it with coconut oil to make my only dessert when I healed my IBS almost 20 years ago. I was not allowed to have sugar for a long while, so my carob coconut fudge hit the spot. The recipe is in both cookbooks.
Golden broth
If you are sensitive to both cocoa and carob, you can make golden broth by combining equal parts coconut milk (or milk of choice) with hot broth, 1/4 teaspoon of turmeric, ginger, cinnamon and a 1/4 teaspoon of honey. Blend until frothy.
People who shouldn’t have bone broth are those who have an issue with histamine, or are extremely sensitive to fats. Also, people with SIBO should not make broth from chicken bones because the chicken cartilage cause reactions.
I love making broth from beef bones, but pork or lamb bones also work. Oxtail (cow tail) broth is my very favorite and you can use the meat for another recipe.
Bone broth hot cocoa recipe
For this recipe, I use a sweetener called inositol. It is actually a powdered supplement for those with blood sugar issues, and often used by those with autoimmune thyroid issues and PCOS. You can add a touch of honey or maple syrup or carob powder for additional sweetness.
Bone Broth Hot Cocoa Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups of bone broth
2 tablespoons of cocoa
1 cup of milk of choice (I used pea protein milk but coconut milk is also good)
1 teaspoon of sweetener of choice (honey, maple syrup, inositol powder or stevia to taste)
Optional: scoop of collagen for extra gut healing nutrition, coconut oil for flavour or a dash of cinnamon.
How to
Heat up bone broth.
For creamiest cocoa, add broth and all other ingredients to blender and blend for 20 seconds.
Enjoy treating yourself well.
Angela Privin is proof that IBS is NOT an incurable disease, but a cry for help from a gut out of balance. When the body AND mind are complaining, it’s an opportunity to examine what’s not working and change it. After solving her own IBS mystery almost two decades ago, Angela became as a health coach to help others. Angela uses root cause medicine protocols personalized to the individual to solve each IBS mystery. Her tools are lab testing, dietary changes, supplementation, subconscious mind work and nervous system rebalancing . Learn more here.