Why? Because they eat bones and cartilage regularly in the form of homemade, slow-simmered bone broths. Traditional diets are very high in gelatin. You might experience this as stiff joints (from less flexible tendons) or wrinkles (from loss of skin elasticity). As you get older, your body makes less collagen, and individual collagen fibers become crosslinked with each other. It is a big, fibrous molecule that makes skin, bones, and tendons both strong and somewhat elastic. Collagen actually makes up almost a third of all the protein in the human body. What exactly is gelatin? Gelatin is just a processed version of a structural protein called collagen that is found in many animals, including humans. That’s when I discovered a protein powder I could get behind 100%: gelatin. I needed to eat a lot more protein than I was getting how could I go about it? In my most recent pregnancy, I came up against the same roadblock. In any case, I decided to only use them in extreme moderation, only on days when my diet was otherwise severely lacking in protein. I don’t know if this was because of what little free glutamic acid was in them, or if it had to do with the sugar alcohols like xylitol which were commonly used to sweeten the protein powders in lieu of sugar. Animal proteins have a higher BV, and usually have a more well-rounded and usable set of amino acids in their make up.īut even then, even when buying the so-called “best” brands, I still noticed that I turned unusually aggressive and moody after consuming the protein powders. I wanted an animal protein powder rather than a plant based one simply because I wanted a protein powder with a high biological value (the higher the BV, the more protein is available to be absorbed and used by your cells). Processed at lower temperatures to reduce free glutamic acids. Made from animals not treated with hormones or antibiotics.Ĥ. No weird chemical or artificial additives.ģ. What I soon learned was that the least offensive brands tend to be the most expensive. I needed the extra protein, and protein powder seemed like an easy, quick fix for this tired momma. (Although, according to this, the oxidized cholesterol in protein powder is far less than what you’d get from eating a few scrambled eggs, so perhaps that concern is over-hyped.)Įventually, though, I tried to find the least offensive brands of protein powder out there. Also the high temperature drying method used to create the powders also tends to create oxidized cholesterol which contributes to heart disease. When created at higher temperatures, for example, the end result contains a large of free glutamic acids which act like MSG in the body. Other typical concerns about protein powders have to do with how they’re processed. They are a completely modern food, new to the human diet, totally experimental. Plus, protein powders are definitely the product of industrialization. I’d much rather get my nutrition from whole foods rather than supplements. In general, I don’t like isolating particular nutrients from foods. When I expressed my concern to my midwife, she recommended a protein powder. We just didn’t eat that much meat, nor could we afford to (especially if we were going to stick to our grass-fed/wild-caught standards). Turns out, my daily protein intake was nowhere near sufficient. (Adequate protein levels during pregnancy have been proven to dramatically decrease swelling, varicose veins, and birth complications.) For the first time in my life, I went home and started thinking about the macro-nutrient levels of my foods. The first time I sought a midwife for prenatal care, she gave me only one dietary prescription: eat between 65g and 85g of protein per day. After all, they promise so much: extra protein without extra food. It used to be that only body builders bothered with them, but now everyone from suburban moms to high-rise living hipsters is on the protein powder bandwagon. I’m not exactly sure when protein powders became so mainstream.
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