Detoxing caveman cure-all or fussy diet fad? Picking a bone with the Paleo broth-erhood proves that granny really did know best

Ihad to suppress a wry yawn at the irony of the Paleo diet continuing to trend with the January detoxers and the unquestioning reverence they have accorded to the newest, hippest dish on the block: bone broth. This is described by Paleonites as a concentrated meaty elixir full of good nutrition and so brilliant for health it’s on a par with, if not way ahead of, green juice and coconut water.

They use bones from top quality grass-fed beef cattle, and the purest water, for theirs has to be the freshest and the most delicious. So popular is it that online entrepreneurs have begun selling it in frozen packs.

Paleo cafes have sprung up in America, selling designer paper cups full of expensive bone broth with added flavours like turmeric, chillies and so on. It can only be a matter of time before they arrive in the UK from the US.

Pfft. Have these people never heard of good old-fashioned meat stock? The roasting and boiling of chicken, beef, ham, venison, lamb and fish bones for tasty, nutritious – and, hello, inexpensive – stock in soups, risottos and casseroles has been common practice for untold generations of ordinary folk, and contemporary progressive chefs and foodies have been doing it for years.

Yet Paleonites talk of it as if it has just been discovered, by them alone, and are beside themselves at the very idea of managing to make it by their own little selves just like Wilma Flintstone must once have done. They’ll be wearing the spent bones as hair clips before we know it

These new-age Paleonites, if I can call them that, call themselves “broth-ers” and evangelise about the natural health benefits of bones, which contain collagen, amino acids and minerals among other good things. They speak of off-the-shelf stock cubes, even organic ones, with disdain. They’ve woken up to the notion of going back to basics and using local, natural ingredients. Finally.

Indeed, our Stone Age ancestors used to break beef bones after gnawing the meat off them to get at the marrow within. Clearly, they knew a good thing when they saw it.

The Paleo diet, for the few of you not already in the know, is also known as the Caveman or Stone Age diet due to the fact that it promotes eating the kind of foods eaten by humans in Paleolithic times (roughly speaking, between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago).

In other words, lots of wild meats, game, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and plants. Anything that wasn’t available for scavenging or killing, or which hadn’t been invented yet – milk, cheese and other dairy products, pulses, legumes, refined sugar, bread, processed ready meals, tea, coffee, wine, beer, whisky – is proscribed.

Unlike vegetarianism, veganism, and the clean eating, macrobiotic and raw food movements, the Paleo diet recognises the health benefits of animals and saturated animal fat (contained in bone marrow as well as the flesh), arguing that it positively strengthens the immune system, helps prevent obesity, promotes healthy bones, protects the liver and lowers cholesterol.

Using animal bones for broth might also cure inflammatory diseases, digestive problems and improve our mood.

Obviously, the animals should be farmed to the highest welfare standards and not injected with any antiobiotics or hormones.

Paleo proselytes prefer their bone broth to be pure and clear, though they refuse to call it consommé – because that would be to admit it’s been around for yonks.

I do concede that making consommé is slightly more tricky than creating plain stock, as it involves much clarifying and straining and a higher ratio of bones. I was taught to make it using a mixture of minced raw chicken and egg yolk to draw the impurities out of it, and though it’s time-consuming and fiddly, it certainly works. It tastes delicious and you can almost feel your system being fortified as you taste it.

I can almost hear the groans of disgust and outrage from those of you who can’t bear the thought of handling a pile of bones. Sorry, but you really need to get a grip. The number of people who gag at the thought of consuming anything obviously related to the animal it came from is already getting out of hand. “Nothing with a face on it,” is a common cry among those who otherwise freely devour all manner of meat and fish so long as it’s unrecognisable on the supermarket shelf or dinner plate.

A friend of mine recently confessed to a phobia of eating anything that still had the bones on it. As a result she can’t eat a chicken leg, pork chop or cook a leg of lamb unless someone takes the meat off for her first. When she ordered a steak pie in a top-notch Edinburgh restaurant and it came with a real bone sticking out of the pastry instead of the usual ceramic pie funnel, she had to leave the restaurant until it was removed.

My point is that you don’t have to be a member of the Paleo broth-erhood to recognise that when it comes to a healthy, balanced diet, great-great-great-great-granny really did know best.

cate.