It's found specifically in the connective tissues throughout your body, from your muscles, bones and tendons to your blood vessels and digestive system. As a compound of essential amino acids, there's only one way to get collagen; your body can't produce it, so you must obtain it through your diet. Most people, however, will simply reach for a collagen supplement rather than boiling down chicken feet or beef bones for a homemade collagen-rich broth.
But what are you really getting in these supplements? Recent laboratory testing stirred up controversy with popular collagen and bone broth products results revealing potential contaminants - including antibiotics, prescription drug metabolites, parabens, steroids and insecticides.
Troublesome Contaminants Found in Many Nonorganic Collagen Products
The collagen products in question were selected based on their popularity and sales ranking on Amazon.com, and all were nonorganic. The results indicate that if you are consuming bone broth or collagen products that are not organic you are likely getting CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operations) byproducts. As reported by the Consumer Wellness Center (CWC):2
"The nonprofit Consumer Wellness Center has completed testing of eight popular bone broth and bone broth protein products to determine the possible presence of chemical pesticides, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, toxicological chemicals and food additive chemicals. No companies paid the CWC to be included or excluded from these tests. All products were purchased from Amazon.com in the year 2017.
Lot numbers of each product tested are included in the full results. No one involved in this testing has any financial stake in the success or failure of any bone broth product ... Chemical analytes were confirmed using five different scientific analysis methods. Those methods, encompassed in LC-MS-TOF analysis, include accurate mass, retention time, isotopic ratios, isotopic spacing and ion fragmentation 'fingerprint' analysis." 3
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