Nutrients
Collagen 2024: An Update
Collagen evolved from slaughterhouse waste to a valued nutrient source. This shift is due to its high glycine content and glycine's essential role in skin health, joint function, and collagen synthesis.
Nutrients
Collagen evolved from slaughterhouse waste to a valued nutrient source. This shift is due to its high glycine content and glycine's essential role in skin health, joint function, and collagen synthesis.
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It's 2010. Back then, as sports and health enthusiasts, we desperately tried to get our hands on high-quality collagen. The only real source at the time, in qualitative terms, was the cheapest gelatin in larger plastic containers. Mockingly called: slaughterhouse waste.
Nobody wanted collagen back then
In every fitness and sports forum, gelatin was seen as an inferior protein source. Nobody wanted it. Yet even then, reasoning and isolated studies pointed to a different conclusion. After all, why should humans mainly eat muscle meat from animals?
In fact, it turns out that we modern humans only eat the "premium cuts" of animals—for example, lean breast or hip meat. Collagen-rich "byproducts" are at best sold as aspic sausage. A tragic development.
Back in 2010, informed observers already knew that collagen might be more than waste. What makes collagen proteins so special, so different: while they're low in "essential amino acids", they're extremely high in glycine and proline.
Convincing Science
The year 2009 was a turning point in this regard. Spanish biochemists had impressively calculated and demonstrated that the body's own glycine synthesis plus the typical glycine intake from food fall far short of the body's actual glycine needs.
"A detailed assessment of all glycine sources shows that the amount of glycine available from endogenous synthesis combined with the amount available from food can fall short by up to 10 g of the amount needed for all metabolic uses."
So we're missing up to 10 g of glycine daily. That's two teaspoons of our pure glycine powder or 50 g of our collagen hydrolysate powder.
But why does the body need glycine at all? The authors laid this out for us too: the body builds 100 g (!) of collagen per day—that alone requires 12 g of glycine. Add to that a few grams of glycine for the synthesis of heme (e.g., hemoglobin!), creatine (muscle performance!), glutathione (master antioxidant!), and bile salts.
From a purely physiological standpoint, glycine also has such far-reaching health effects that we already stated in a 2015 blog post that "glycine is the amino acid of the future" ([source no longer available]). Most recently, large meta-analyses on collagen hydrolysate report, for example:
"These compelling results underscore the efficacy of a 12-week course of hydrolyzed collagen in revitalizing skin by increasing its hydration and elasticity."
Collagen suddenly became elite
That these findings would eventually overflow into the mainstream was predictable. What wasn't foreseeable was how gigantic the wave would become. Both Google Trends searches for "collagen" and the number of published articles clearly show enormous interest.
Today, it feels like everyone—but especially women ;-) —has a collagen powder sitting at home. Yet this enormous attention has its downsides. Unfortunately, the marketing departments of collagen manufacturers work hard to suggest to consumers that every minor ailment requires a different "collagen type".
So they flood interested consumers with options, increasing the likelihood that a customer will buy a collagen product at all.
One important note here: the "collagen type" doesn't matter at all—the building blocks that the body uses from a collagen product to build collagen are always the same! So a collagen product potentially helps joints, bones, skin, and other glycine-dependent processes in the body.
Collagen: The Outlook
Let's settle on two things:
One small PS: Collagen hydrolysate refers to the enzymatic cleavage product of large collagen proteins. We typically call the latter gelatin.
Collagen hydrolysate is thus pre-digested into short protein chains—often used synonymously with "collagen". While you can make excellent gelatin desserts with gelatin, collagen hydrolysate is better suited as a perfectly soluble drink powder ;-)
