# 136 Chicken Soup for the Soul, but Broth for the Gut - Julia Baker, Brothy LLC

Meaningful Marketplace Podcast

It was tummy troubles for founder Julia Baker in the summer of 2018 that created the impetus for the company to be called Brothy. Or to put it far, far less delicately as Julia says, she spent a lot of 2018 “on the toilet”. The issue of gut health has been the inspiration and desperation that has caused the birth of many a new food product, and Brothy is a classic example. Her tumultuous journey lasted for about a year, trying traditional medicines to alleviate the condition without success. A naturopath friend suggested Julia had leaky gut and wondered if Julia had tried bone broth. And as we have seen in many of these shows, a desperate person will try anything so Julia started eating broth which turned out to be the magical cure. Julia stresses she was definitely not the stereotypical food entrepreneur. She didn’t grow up in the kitchen playing with recipes and delighting in serving a great food to a big table of family and friends. In fact, she grew up going to restaurants and leaving the cooking to others. Who knows what caused Julia’s abdominal problems, but the extreme discomfort and looking for relief has lead to becoming founder and CEO of her own company and reinforces that necessity is most assuredly the Mother of invention. But Julia didn’t just go to the store and get off the shelf broth. Absolutely not. She went to farmers’ markets, sourced high-quality, local ingredients and started experimenting and formulating her own recipes. After a couple of months, Julia began feeling better, much better. She continued to make bone broth a staple of her diet and soon began to share it with family and friends, always having a big mason jar of bone broth in the refrigerator. Then her story became a more traditional food startup story. The friends loved it, asked for more and so Julia took the plunge and started a business to introduce her broth to the world. About a year old now, the company is getting traction as many people are experiencing the healing power of broth. The healing power, in Julia’s opinion, comes from all the collagen that gets extracted from the bone and surrounding tissue. One of the amino acids related to good health, collagen is prominent in helping repair the leaky gut Julia’s naturopath friend had diagnosed. Not recognized by traditional medicine, leaky gut is thought to be caused by stress and a diet heavy in processed foods that tend to deteriorate the gut lining, causing leakage. This then disrupts food digestion, causes inflammation and leaves many people, “on the toilet”. The recipe for Julia’s bone broth is not traditional, she has her science down. The simmering will be 24 hours or so for chicken broth, up to 72 hours for beef bone broth. Julia’s broth, however, is made by roasting the bones with vegetables in avocado oil before they go into the simmering pot. This brings out a better flavor she has found. Brothy can be purchased at Portland, Oregon area farmers’ markets or their website and shipped to your home. You can find Brothy at, website: https://www.brothypdx.com/, IG: @brothypdx on Instagram. Our hosts: Twitter - @sarahmasoni and @spicymarshall, Instagram - @masoniandmarshall.