Maxine Pye posts:
Do not listen to me.
I have no idea what I am doing here.
But I do know that there is no such thing as vegan collagen. It only exists in animals.
Why does that matter?
Because collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body. It’s in your skin, your tendons, your ligaments, your cartilage, your blood vessels and throughout your connective tissue.
Collagen is rich in glycine, one of the most important amino acids in the body.
Your body needs glycine to make glutathione, one of your main antioxidants.
You need it to make bile so you can digest fat and absorb vitamins A, D, E and K.
You need it to make haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen around your body.
You need it to make creatine for your muscles and your brain.
It helps calm the nervous system and has been linked to better sleep.
The richest sources come from animal foods, especially the skin, cartilage, connective tissue, broth and slow cooked cuts.
Humans used to eat the whole animal before mainstream nutrition guidelines told us to trim the fat, remove the skin and throw away the bones.
Dietitians rarely talk about glycine. It has no RDA, no routine test and no deficiency disease attached to it. And it certainly doesn’t fit a vegan narrative.
Maybe that is why the people eating the most animal foods have the best skin?
One of Maxine’s friends elaborated:
It is not an essential amino acid. We produce just over 1g a day. It is a lot more important than you describe. To estimate an RDA. A trial was run in young people measuring protein in and protein out. Lets take a 100kg person as standard weight for ease of calculation The trials led to a 0.8 factor. A 100kg person needs 80g of protein a day. If they eat less they are degrading. These were young people. In older people now its considered that the factor needs to be 1.2g at 60 Up to 1.6g per kg for older people. Glycine is 13 percent of our total amino acids. a 100kg 70 year old needs 160g of protein a day. 21g of glycine. If they get protein from plant material its more difficult to digest. 1 in 5 people have a genetic enzyme problem etc etc. An uncompromised vegan needs to eat nearly a kilogram of tofu a day. A meat eater only needs 80g of colagen.
(Tom: I repeat what I often share:
Every Spirit/Mind/Body combination is unique.
There are probably 8 billion ‘Best’ diets on the planet, one for each of us.
You need to become your own health researcher to discover the best one for your combination.
I have heard (and my observations support it) that 80% of peope who try a vegan diet (even intelligently) revert as they find it unsustainable.
Yet I have two gorgeous women I know, both my side of 60, who a vegetarian and look fabulous!)