"Soup before meals is better than any good prescription," this saying seems to make sense. However, from the perspective of modern nutrition, advocating for "drinking more soup" is not truly beneficial to health.
Chinese people place great importance on "nourishment." Traditional Chinese Medicine developed a theory called the "tonification theory" long ago, which includes specific categories such as "nourishing yin," "supplementing yang," and "tonifying the spleen and stomach." Besides medicinal tonification, the common people also value "food therapy," and stewed chicken soup and bone broth are the most highly praised and talked-about "tonifying soups" among the nation. This is not surprising. Due to low productivity in the past, food scarcity, and difficulty in storing food, ordinary people consumed much less meat and fat compared to today. They suffered from absolute or relative deficiencies in protein and fat intake, leading to more cases of physical weakness and malnutrition. A weak constitution and anemia not only cause many diseases but also shorten lifespan. Many people, through timely dietary therapy, can effectively improve their physical condition and prevent certain diseases. Therefore, chicken soup and bone broth naturally become beloved and effective tonifying foods.
However, with improved living conditions today, chicken, duck, fish, and meat are no longer "luxuries" reserved only for festivals.
For modern people who suffer from "excess nutrition" or "nutritional imbalance," unless their constitution is truly "deficient" and requires "tonification," it is advisable to drink less chicken soup and bone broth.
The reason is that while stewed chicken is delicious and rich in protein, chicken soup is often high in salt, saturated fat, and cholesterol. Even if you eat the chicken without the skin, the fat has already melted into the soup. Drinking chicken soup will lead to excessive intake of animal fat, which not only increases the burden on the gastrointestinal tract, causing digestive diseases, but also raises blood lipid levels, making one prone to coronary heart disease. For patients with chronic cholecystitis, drinking overly rich chicken soup can easily trigger acute episodes, so it is not encouraged to drink it excessively.
Bone broth is typically made from large pork bones, meat bones, or fish bones, simmered for a long time. It is rich in "chondroitin" and "collagen," which can enhance the body's absorption and supplementation of calcium. However, bone broth is high in fat and cholesterol, especially the marrow, which has a particularly high cholesterol content. If seafood, mushrooms, animal offal, etc., are added to the bone broth and simmered for a long time, the purine content becomes quite high. After consumption, the liver metabolizes it into a large amount of nitric acid, which is harmful to the human body. Additionally, when green vegetables are added to the broth and cooked for too long, the potassium and oxalate content in the soup will be higher. Drinking this can be harmful to patients with chronic kidney disease and can also easily lead to kidney stones.
In conclusion, chicken soup and bone broth should be consumed in moderation. Those who are truly deficient can drink them, but it is not advisable to drink overly concentrated broth. Furthermore, when stewing chicken or bone broth, it is best not to add other animal offal, and one should avoid drinking chicken or bone broth that has been repeatedly and excessively simmered.