Osso Good Company: Taking the Time to Bring Bone Broth to Customers

Osso Good Company: Taking the Time to Bring Bone Broth to Customers

Osso good bone broth meredith cochran

Good food should take time to prepare. Unfortunately, most people today live hectic lives that leave them with little time to dedicate to food preparation. In past generations, at least one member of the family (admittedly, almost always women) would spend long hours laboring in the kitchen. The preparation of meals was a sacred and time-consuming responsibility, and the end result was wholesome and nourishing meals prepared from natural ingredients sourced locally. Today, however, the rat race that characterizes an increasingly urban population has led to drastic changes in how we eat.

According to an article published by Urban Food Policy, “USDA data show that over the past 30 years, the food that Americans eat away from home (e.g., in restaurants and fast food chains) has grown substantially. In 1977 people obtained approximately 18% of their daily calories from food away from home, but the percentage jumped to 34% by 2012. Of this share of food away from home, the amount obtained from fast food climbed from less than 6% in 1977 to nearly 16% in 2012.”

As times have changed, most households today have two breadwinners, with both men and women working outside the home. In fact, studies have shown that between two-thirds and three-quarters of women work outside the home today. While this statistic certainly confirms the important steps towards equal opportunities between men and women, the reality of working outside the home has led many families to rely on fast food, frozen dinners, and other “quick” meal fixes that have negatively affected our health.

Fortunately, several health food companies are today dedicating time and resources to offer healthy, nourishing food alternatives that can quickly be turned into healthy meals resembling those home-cooked meals of past generations. A healthful bone broth soup, for example, could take anywhere between 12 and 24 hours of slow simmering to draw out the important nutrients hiding in the bones of animals. If the idea of spending a full day in the kitchen cooking a soup doesn’t correspond with your busy work, school, and family-filled schedule, Osso Good Bone Broth is one company that offers pre-prepared and packaged bone broth soups.

 

Who is Osso Good Company? 

The Osso Good Company was founded several years ago by a group of friends and family members who believe, as Hippocrates said, that our food should be our medicine, and our medicine should be our food. While hundreds of innovative brands and businesses were transforming the health food scene and market with innovative superfoods, Jazz Hilmer, Toran Hilmer, and Meredith Cochran, the co-founders of The Osso Good Company, realized that nobody seemed to be talking about the important benefits of bone broth.

Animal bones and bone marrow contain an enormous amount of vitamins, minerals, and other health-enhancing properties. Studies have corroborated that human ancestors have been eating bone marrow for at least 400,000 years, with prehistoric humans eating bone marrow like a form of canned soup. In fact, the nutrition found in bone broth might have played an important role in the evolution of the human hand. According to a recent study published by the University of Kent, “the strength required to access the high-calorie content of bone marrow may have played a key role in the evolution of the human hand and explain why primates’ hands are not like ours.” Our ancestors intimately understood the nutrition hiding inside the bones of the animals they hunted, and the process of extracting these nutrients was an important factor in our evolution.

The Osso Good Company today makes a wide variety of bone broths and paleo soups that are nutrient-dense and made with organic ingredients that are Certified Grain-Free Gluten-free, Certified Paleo, and Whole30 Approved.  For example, their Paleo Meal Kit includes 18 pouches of different-flavored bone broths. According to the company, “Paleo Meal Kits from The Osso Good Co. make it easy to eat clean, organic, and fresh! If you’re looking for a detox plan that tackles inflammation head-on, our Paleo Meal Kit has the nutrient-dense Bone Broths and Paleo Soups to help you reset your gut and get back to feeling awesome.”

Instead of mass-producing a generic bone broth product, the brand continues to make their own bone broth in small, controlled batches to ensure the quality is always consistent and the taste is always amazing. Since beginning business, The Osso Good Company has continued to innovate with unique bone broth products including flavored soups and “sippable” pouches. They have expanded retail distribution and even opened their own café in Los Angeles that features a bone broth waffle. Today, the company employs 39 people and generates over $8 million in revenue.

 

The Health and Nutritional Benefits of Bone Broth

There is a reason that our prehistoric human ancestors didn’t simply throw away the bones from the mammoths and other large mammals that they hunted. The bones of animals are an extremely rich source of essential vitamins and nutrients, including calcium, magnesium, and phosphorous. The slow cooking process also releases natural compounds from the tissue and cartilage, including collagen. When cooked, collagen turns into gelatin which offers the body essential amino acids, the building blocks of the proteins we need.

A diet with substantial sources of gelatin derived from collagen can protect the joints and even help to fight against osteoarthritis. Furthermore, bone broth has been shown to help reduce inflammation support overall gut health. Among the many essential amino acids present in bone broth, the presence of glutamine offers specific health benefits. A 2017 study in the journal Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care finds that diets that include healthy amounts of glutamine can play a role in healing the intestinal barrier in human digestive systems. This benefit is especially important for people who suffer from digestive conditions such as leaky gut or inflammatory bowel disease.

According to Meredith Cochran, current chief executive officer of Osso Good Bone Broth and author of ‘The 7 Day Bone Broth Diet Plan’, “as a passionate Traditional Chinese Medicine and Chinese Herbology scholar and avid believer in a holistic approach to wellness, I was inspired to write ‘The 7 Day Bone Broth Diet Plan’ to be a resource for how to use food, and more specifically bone broth, as a medicine to help heal the body from the inside out…Because bone broth is full of nutrients, collagen, gelatin, amino acids, and more, it supports the nourishment and health benefits people crave.”

All of the bone broths made by The Osso Good Company are made from 100 percent organic or better ingredients. Their chicken, beef, pork, and turkey bones are sourced directly from farms that care about the welfare of the animals they raise. The company also includes a wide variety of herbs, vegetables, and spices carefully sourced from organic sources that, together with the bones, are left to cautiously simmer for up to 24 hours. This slow process yields a flavorful, gelatin-rich, and nutrient-dense sippable bone broth that is paleo, keto-friendly, and gluten-free, with no added flavorings, salt, or preservatives.

 

Challenging the Fast Food Paradigm

A 2019 survey found that about half of people only spend between 30 and 60 minutes cooking a weeknight meal while 41 percent of the people who responded wanted their meals prepared in under 30 minutes. Only 8 percent of those who responded were willing to invest over an hour in the preparation of healthy meals. Given this reality, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the fast-food industry generates revenue of over $570 billion around the world each year, while the frozen food and meal market is expected to grow to $282.5 billion by 2023.

Many individuals and families simply do not have the time for home-cooked meals, especially when it comes to slow-simmered bone broths. The Osso Good Company saw this reality as an opportunity to fill an important yet overlooked niche in the health food market.

According to Cochran, “this prehistoric food was an important staple of our ancestors’ diets because it contained nutrients not found in lean cuts of meat. Because we can’t simply bite into a bone and digest it, we must slowly simmer them over long periods of time in order to draw out the liquid that nourishes our bodies.”

Cochran goes on to say that “we discovered that we weren’t the only ones who were looking for a homemade bone broth, without the hassle. After squeezing every inch of space out of our shared kitchen space, we were busting at the seams and selling out every week with only our online, direct to consumer business.”

As sales and consumer demand grew, the brand expanded into other marketing channels such as retail and wholesale. However, the co-founders did not want to abandon the quality of their carefully prepared bone broths by outsourcing production to a third-party manufacturer. Today, The Osso Good Company continues to produce all of its bone broths and paleo soups in their own dedicated kitchen. “This allows us to completely control the sourcing, traditional cooking methods in small batches, and high quality,” says Cochran.

Not everybody has the available time to slow-simmer animal bones to extract important vitamins, nutrients, and collagen to boost their immune systems and improve overall gut health. The Osso Good Company has built a thriving business by responding to this reality taking the time to bring healthy bone broths and Paleo soups to people strapped for time.

 

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