The Collagen Diet

by Josh Axe

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

I picked up The Collagen Diet not because I’m actually interested in a new diet, and particularly not specifically around collagen, but because I wanted to know what the health benefits of eating collagen might be and why someone would propose an entire diet based on it. Personally, I’m skeptical of any author who encourages “cleanses” and even more skeptical of an author who has an entirely different book advocating for an entirely different diet—keto (So which is better, Dr. Axe? Collagen or keto?), but I did learn some interesting things about the research on collagen, which was my main goal.

There are several chapters in the front of the book about collagen and its benefits and the research that has been done on it, much more information than I would expect to get just Googling “benefits of eating collagen,” which is certainly something I could have done instead of reading this book. Dr. Axe posits it as life-changing, good for everything from helping his mother’s cancer to aiding in the alleviation of arthritis. Personally, I’m convinced enough from the research he cites to believe that, yes, this could be worth adding to your diet…if only it weren’t in so few foods.


There’s also a lot of technical information about different types of collagen, how they work, what foods they can found it, and what foods they should be eaten in combination with to get the full benefits.

The idea that there is a collagen diet is still a bit unconvincing to me, however, based on the fact that it is found in so few foods—including egg shell membrane, which is basically impossible to just eat. The basic gist of the diet is honestly that you should just eat tons of bone broth and buy a collagen supplement and maybe try to get in some gelatin here and there. Really, that’s it. Many of the breakfast recipes, for instance, are smoothie recipes to which you add a collagen supplement. The other recipes largely call for getting in bone broth somehow, such as making a tomato or squash soup with bone broth. I don’t think anyone needs an entire book to suggest eating a supplement and eating tons of bone broth to them. And the other information is general diet advice—eat a variety of fruits and vegetable, avoid sugar, get enough sleep, and exercise. Not exactly ground-breaking.

If you want to learn about collagen, this book will work. I wouldn’t personally recommend it for the actual diet. At the least, I’d probably get the book from the library and skim through it first to see if the recipes are something you’d actually frequently make, or if you’d just go for a supplement and eat whatever you normally eat.