This Brodo Blog series is a part of our 30 Days of Brodo, which challenges you to drink Brodo for 30 days in a row in order to jumpstart your New Year with a healthy ritual. Find out more on our Instagram page and post your own story, tagging @brodo with #brodo30 to join other health-minded foodies!
Please enjoy this entry written by our head chef and founder, Marco Canora.
30 days of Brodo
…Could lead to a litany of benefits – it certainly had an extraordinary impact on my life – enough so that it drove me to start selling it out the back door of my East Village restaurant Hearth.
Before I found my Brodo habit (in my mid forties) I was the poster child of bad habits. Pursuing a career as a chef in NYC didn’t exactly jive with good health. Extremely long and stressful work weeks, 2 am dinners of bodega sandwiches and chips bookended with booze, sugary treats, simple carbs, gallons of coffee and, yes.. Marlboro reds. All of this plus extremely poor sleeping habits and no exercise left me overweight, under nourished, anxious and tweaked out with a tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest prompt. I was a miserable human unable to lead a kitchen team effectively, not to mention my piss poor performance as a father to my newborn daughter and a husband to my super human wife.
Brodo didn’t cure all of my sins but it absolutely enabled me to get on a path to a better life – lemme explain..
My first move was replacing my 4 quart a day coffee habit with our cooking broth at Hearth (aka Brodo’s Hearth broth)… I still had my morning joe but transitioned to broth after noon.
This simple swap set off a cascade of benefits:
The first thing I noticed was its effect on my demeanor- I felt more calm, less jittery. Drinking a gallon of coffee made me a manic mess!
Secondly, I found I wasn’t snacking all day – in a restaurant kitchen it’s very easy to fall into bad snacking habits. There’s always a great crusty piece of bread and butter on hand, not to mention the ice cream and sorbet drawers in the pastry department- sipping on this savory, low calorie, high-protein beverage kept me satiated- my sugar cravings and hunger pangs diminished.
Getting off of afternoon caffeine began to positively affect my sleep as well – I was falling asleep quicker and experiencing deeper more restorative sleep upon waking – truly a revelation!
Snacking less on bread and ice cream + consuming more protein put me on the path to losing weight.
Better sleep + less weight encouraged me to start exercising.
Sleep + weight loss + exercise enabled me to begin (I’m gonna throw up in my mouth as I say this, but… its true) my wellness journey. 10 years later, at 55, I’m am extremely committed to my health, my family and my businesses. I have found a sense of calm and confidence. I’ve come to realize that self care and self love is the starting point required to accomplish whatever it is you want in your life.
I understand if the Brodo guy trying to sell you brodo breeds skepticism, but, what can I tell you – this was my experience and its impact was so great it drove me to start this company. I thought who better than depleted, stressed out New Yorkers to test my thesis / prove the concept?
Well… with 9 years behind us, over a million hot cups of broth sold on the streets of NYC and the latest and greatest single serve pouches of our flavored sipping broths available on brodo.com I encourage you to take us up on the #brodo30 journey. It just may be the catalyst you need to get you where you wanna go….
