How much collagen in everyday foods?

(Windmill Tilter) #1

I’ve been experiencing soreness in my achilles tendon upon waking for a little over a week, and I’m reluctant to lift weights until it’s resolved.

The standard treatment for mild tendon injury appears to be light exercise followed by a 15g dose of collagen along with 50g vitamin c.

Collagen supplements aren’t cheap. This makes me wonder how much collagen I’m actually getting anyway in my normal diet. I’m eating 1.25lbs of 73/27 ground beef each day right now, and I’m guessing there is a fair bit of collagen in there. The cuts that go into ground beef typically meet that fate because they’re so full of collagen they’re too chewy to eat without many hours of slow cooking, or mechanical grinding. If I’m getting >20g of collagen each day already, theres no point dropping $30 on a jar if the stuff… :yum:

So my question is, has anyone come across a resource that lists the collagen content of common foods? My google-fu was stumped. I got many hundreds of BS articles on the virtues of bone broth, but no real data.

(Justin Jordan) #2

I hope that’s a typo, because 50 grams of vitamin C is going to be…unpleasant

(Justin Jordan) #3

That said, the Keith Baar protocol for tendon repair is 15 grams of collagen and 500mg vit C and hour before exercise for the specific tendon.

The best thing I’ve done for tendonitis is taking a high quality fish oil, but I am experimenting with collagen now.

#4

I use Great Lakes Collagen Hydrolysate – 10g per day.

(GINA ) #5

I use Vital Proteins that I get at Costco. It is a pretty big tub for about $35. I take a scoop per day (I usually disolve it in coffee) and it lasts a long time. It keeps tendonitis at bay for me, for sure. I get tennis elbow and my hamstrings get inflamed if I slack off using it. I don’t take it with any special timing or extra added vitamin C (beyond what is already in it).

On the downside, my hair grows so fast I can’t go more than 4 weeks without a root touch up, and I have to constantly trim my nails to keep them short enough to work on the computer.

20ozCanisters_new_e508578d-0a3a-4d57-8a9a-e15e1da0c084_2000x
20ozCanisters_new_e508578d-0a3a-4d57-8a9a-e15e1da0c084_2000x.jpg1365×2048 486 KB

(Bunny) #6

People ignore gelatin which is chalk full of hyaluronic acid (what actually hold all the tissues in your body together) and also sister related binding compounds or the molecular glue of entire body and high in bone broth and Japanese potato’s and is responsible for longevity with no disease at all in Japan, they walk around smoking cigarettes well into their 80’s.

That’s what animal hooves are made of and those are tough? Elmers Glue?

…And your not going to do that with man made pills because it is not tiny enough in micron particulates to be absorbed.

Footnotes

[1] ”…The researchers tested the blood for amino acids that could build up the collagen protein that composes tendons, ligaments, and bones. … “These data suggest that adding gelatin and vitamin C to an intermittent exercise program could play a beneficial role in injury prevention and tissue repair,” the researchers wrote. …” …More

[2] The Use of Hyaluronic Acid after Tendon Surgery and in Tendinopathies

[3] Improvement of flexor tendon reconstruction with carbodiimide-derivatized hyaluronic acid and gelatin-modified intrasynovial allografts: study of a primary repair failure model.

[4] Top 8 Nutrients You Need to Speed Up Injury Recovery

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #7
(Windmill Tilter) #8

Lol. Yup, 15g collagen and 7 crates of grapefruit. :yum:

I guess that should be 50mg :slight_smile:

(Bunny) #9

Peppers have more natural vitamin C than fruit.

(Windmill Tilter) #10

They had this at Walmart for $42. That’s what prompted me to post the topic.

For most folks eating a “healthy” diet comprised of mostly whole grains, they’re just not going get much collagen, so supplementing 10g a day makes sense.

A carnivore on the other hand that eats 2lbs of chuck roast every day might be getting 20g of collagen every day, in which case supplementing is probably superfluous.

Since I eat 1.25lbs of hamburger every day, I’m wondering if I’m just spending $30/lb unnecessarily.

It sounds like without supplementing collagen your tendonitis flares up. How much protein do you get a day? Are you eating collagen rich proteins (chuck roast, brisket, ribs, pulled pork, etc?)

(GINA ) #11

Now that I think about it, I usually don’t eat a lot of higher collegen foods. I had about a lb of ground beef today, but that isn’t usual.

(Troy) #12

+1
It’s $30 here though

24 oz tub I think, gets about 30-34 servings depending on your given scooper skills or lack of🤣

2 scoops or 20 grams
Gives about 18gr of protein

Tip…
Goes on sale too at Costco
The last time was October 2019…$25!!
Limit 4…so they say

Oh…oops😬
The Benefit sorry
I no longer have nails
I have talons
So much easier to dismember Prey!:slightly_smiling_face:
N=1

(Polly) #13

As a supporter of the Just Eat Real Food movement, I would prefer to get my collagen from bone broth rather than from a packet or tub of industrially processed stuff. Broth is delicious and nutritious.

I hope you fix your tendon problem whichever option you take. It sounds painful.

(mole person) #14

I go the bone broth route myself. However, I’m suspicious about how much actual collagen would be in the broth alone. I get my butcher to give me cuts of beef that are combination of meat, fat, tendons, ligaments, connective tissues, and marrow bones and make a soup out of that and eat the meat and all the other tissues along with a broth. I love this soup and have it pretty much every day for breakfast. I have a cup of this in the early morning and won’t eat again until my early dinner. I also eat pig skin occasionally.

(Utility Muffin Research Kitchen) #15

Collagen does not exist in isolation, and content in the food may not tell the full story.

I know little about it, but consider for example magnesium: Spinach contains a lot of magnesium, but it also contains oxalates that will react with the magnesium, so the net balance of magnesium might be negative. If you need magnesium, it’s a bad idea to eat spinach.

(Windmill Tilter) #16

Me too. Hence my question. It’s odd that for all the hundreds of articles about bone broth and the importance of collagen, I can’t seem to track down anything that quantifies how much collagen is in particular foods.

Even the commercially available bone broths wax poetic about the amazing benefits of collagen (skin, nails, hair, joint health!), but don’t bother to say how much their product contains. My bullshit-o-meter starts rising whenever the ratio of hyperbole:data gets so far out of wack. It reminds me of GKI.

Surely with all of this interest in collagen, somebody has quantified how much individual foods typically have?

(Windmill Tilter) #17

Got one:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0101-20612018000500167

Now all I need is a bit of vinegar, some pepsin, and a few pounds of chicken feet. Apparently the yield is a as high as 73g collagen per 100g of chicken feet when using vinegar/enzyme. At my grocery store, chicken feet are $2.00/lb so that’s around 300g collagen for $2.00. The same quantity of collagen from a supplement runs about $15. I could use one of my pressure cookers, but my kids will probably find the enzyme reaction more exciting and the yield will likely be dramatically higher. I may actually have to try this… :yum:

(Todd Allen) #18

Peppers are fruit.

(Bunny) #19

Ok let’s rephrase this; no sugar or too little sugar to worry about and better than any pill for sure…lol

(mole person) #20

Ooh, your chicken feet post reminded me that I was making an aspic jelly out of pigs feet, and was loving it, and that should be loaded with collagen. I’m going to start making it again!