This book is dangerously irresponsible. The full first half of this book is dedicated to promoting broth as a cure-all for any kind of ailment you have: arthritis, skin conditions, wounds (including broken bones), infectious diseases, digestive disorders, cancer, mental health illnesses, sports performance issues, and aging. The book is co-authored by the "broth expert" and a nutritionist with a phD who studies broth's effects clinically. I have not the time or training to go through each claim the book makes individually, but it appears to me to be a hodgepodge of solid scientific facts, overblown claims about the health benefits of broth, pseudoscience, and fanatical testimonials. It's this cocktail that I think makes the book truly damaging.
From my understanding, there is indeed solid scientific evidence that chicken broth has some anti-inflammatory properties. But that kind of science is put on the same level as claims that research shows that cartilage stops the spread of cancer and that also broth that is made from cartilage also slows down cancer (neither of which are proven to any acceptable standard). And because these claims are side by side it makes it incredibly difficult to sort out what is truth and what is conjecture.
Throughout these chapters, there are also many inset testimonials from various people claiming that broth has cured them or their loved ones. One woman "credits" bone broth with regrowing the enamel back onto her front right incisor after being a vegetarian for twelve years. Another woman says that her son-in-law broke his back in two places, and the daily drinking of lovingly prepared broths reduced his healing time from over 3 months to just 2 months --- "the medical professionals were astounded with how quickly he healed"! Another person claimed that drinking broth every day cured their Crohn's disease in just a year. These sprinkled-in testimonials all contribute to painting the picture of broth as this miracle cure that doctors don't want you to know about, as the text says, because there's no money to be made by doctors and big pharma in peddling soup broth as a cure.
This is a lesser quibble about the text because most of it is just so bad in a different way, but the first couple chapters are also heavily laden with hinted racism, blaming MSG for the degradation of traditionally made, nourishing broth by becoming a huge staple in prepackaged broths, which are heavily used in the US. The authors are careful to say that the science is inconclusive about to what extent (if any) MSG is actually harmful, but are quick to say that its use is responsible for the poor health of all the US. Then later East Asia is both lauded by the text for their soup drinking and also accused of stealing America's good chicken feet? ("Ever wonder why you can't purchase chicken feet in American supermarkets? It's because virtually all the feet from American industrial poultry production are shipped to China, where they go into the pot to make soup." Which isn't technically incorrect, but is definitely a mischaracterization about the cause and effect of it being difficult to buy chicken feet in mainstream US grocery stores --- Americans haven't wanted to buy them, so the chicken farmers have had to find other markets for them.) There's this heavy both fear and mystical reverence for "the Orient" in this opening section that sits ill with me.
Truly I am baffled by the fact that everywhere I look this book is regarded as the canon text of broth cooking, when it is so heavily full and focused on broth as an alternative medicine. Food is important for your body, but it isn't a medicine that will cure your every ailment. Cure-alls generally cure nothing. I'm very disappointed in this book and will be looking for my broth cooking tips elsewhere.