Collagen from Animal Skin and Gelatin Benefits Your Skin, Joints and Stress Levels
Since collagen-rich skin is often removed from meats before consumption in modern societies, including more animal skin from pastured animals in your diet, or supplementing with gelatin powder from cooked animal skin, for those who aren't fond of animal skin or cannot obtain enough, makes some theoretical sense. Gelatin powder (such as the Great Lakes brand) can be mixed into broths, soups, stews, gravies, sauces and beverages. I find that it makes a good substitute for other very unhealthy thickeners like wheat flour and corn starch.
"The muscle meats contain so much tryptophan and cysteine (which is both antithyroid and potentially excitotoxic) that a pure meat diet can cause hypothyroidism. In poor countries, people have generally eaten all parts of the animal, rather than just the muscles--feet, heads, skin, etc. About half of the protein in an animal is collagen (gelatin), and collagen is deficient in tryptophan and cysteine. This means that, in the whole animal, the amino acid balance is similar to the adult's requirements. Research in the amino acid requirements of adults has been very inadequate, since it has been largely directed toward finding methods to produce farm animals with a minimum of expense for feed. The meat industry isn't interested in finding a diet for keeping chickens, pigs, and cattle healthy into old age. As a result, adult rats have provided most of our direct information about the protein requirements of adults, and since rats keep growing for most of their life, their amino acid requirements are unlikely to be the same as ours." - An Interview With Dr. Raymond Peat: A Renowned Nutritional Counselor Offers His Thoughts About Thyroid Disease by Mary Shomon, Latest Update: May 20, 2012, http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/ray-peat.htm
Gelatin, stress, longevity
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/gelatin.shtml
> glycine [has] a very broad range of cell-protective actions.
> Gelatin (the cooked form of collagen) makes up about 50% of the protein in an animal, but a much smaller percentage in the more active tissues, such as brain, muscle, and liver. 35% of the amino acids in gelatin are glycine, 11% alanine, and 21% proline and hydroxyproline.
> In the industrialized societies, the consumption of gelatin has decreased, relative to the foods that contain an inappropriately high proportion of the antimetabolic amino acids, especially tryptophan and cysteine.
> The degenerative and inflammatory diseases can often be corrected by the use of gelatin-rich foods.
> A generous supply of glycine/gelatin, against a balanced background of amino acids, has a great variety of antistress actions. Glycine is recognized as an “inhibitory” neurotransmitter, and promotes natural sleep. Used as a supplement, it has helped to promote recovery from strokes and seizures, and to improve learning and memory. But in every type of cell, it apparently has the same kind of quieting, protective antistress action. The range of injuries produced by an excess of tryptophan and serotonin seems to be prevented or corrected by a generous supply of glycine. Fibrosis, free radical damage, inflammation, cell death from ATP depletion or calcium overload, mitochondrial damage, diabetes, etc., can be prevented or alleviated by glycine.
Warning: grain-fed animals tend to have imbalanced levels of omega 6/omega 3 fats in their skins.
Some foods rich in glycine:
Gelatin (ex: Great Lakes kosher beef gelatin
Skin of Pork (pigs feet and ears), Chicken (esp. feet), Turkey and Beef
Broths, soups, stews that contain animal skins, joints and connective tissues
Egg whites
Crustaceans: shrimp, crab
Whitefish
Seaweed
Mollusks: scallops
Seeds
Legumes
Why Broth is Beautiful: Essential Roles for Proline, Glycine and Gelatin
Written by Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN
Wednesday, June 18 2003 11:43
http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/why-broth-is-beautiful
"[Evidence going back more than a century] not only established gelatin’s value to cartilage and bones but also to the skin, digestive tract, immune system, heart and muscles. ....
[P]rior to the mid 20th century, doctors recommended the addition of glycine-rich gelatin to the homemade infant formulas that were used when breast feeding was not possible. (Gotthoffer, NR, Gelatin in Nutrition and Medicine (Graylake IL, Grayslake Gelatin Company, 1945), pp. 25-37.) ....
[You can improve collagen status by adding gelatin to your diet] in the form of gelatin-rich broth used in soups, stews and sauces. This traditional food, which has nearly disappeared from the American table, fits the "you are what you eat" prescription to a T. Manufactured gelatin is also a useful item in that it is nothing less than heat-denatured collagen. However, because manufactured gelatin contains small amounts of MSG [the Great Lakes brand claims that it does not http://www.greatlakesgelatin.com/consumer/noMSG.php], it should be avoided by those who are sensitive to it."
"The muscle meats contain so much tryptophan and cysteine (which is both antithyroid and potentially excitotoxic) that a pure meat diet can cause hypothyroidism. In poor countries, people have generally eaten all parts of the animal, rather than just the muscles--feet, heads, skin, etc. About half of the protein in an animal is collagen (gelatin), and collagen is deficient in tryptophan and cysteine. This means that, in the whole animal, the amino acid balance is similar to the adult's requirements. Research in the amino acid requirements of adults has been very inadequate, since it has been largely directed toward finding methods to produce farm animals with a minimum of expense for feed. The meat industry isn't interested in finding a diet for keeping chickens, pigs, and cattle healthy into old age. As a result, adult rats have provided most of our direct information about the protein requirements of adults, and since rats keep growing for most of their life, their amino acid requirements are unlikely to be the same as ours." - An Interview With Dr. Raymond Peat: A Renowned Nutritional Counselor Offers His Thoughts About Thyroid Disease by Mary Shomon, Latest Update: May 20, 2012, http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/ray-peat.htm
Gelatin, stress, longevity
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/gelatin.shtml
> glycine [has] a very broad range of cell-protective actions.
> Gelatin (the cooked form of collagen) makes up about 50% of the protein in an animal, but a much smaller percentage in the more active tissues, such as brain, muscle, and liver. 35% of the amino acids in gelatin are glycine, 11% alanine, and 21% proline and hydroxyproline.
> In the industrialized societies, the consumption of gelatin has decreased, relative to the foods that contain an inappropriately high proportion of the antimetabolic amino acids, especially tryptophan and cysteine.
> The degenerative and inflammatory diseases can often be corrected by the use of gelatin-rich foods.
> A generous supply of glycine/gelatin, against a balanced background of amino acids, has a great variety of antistress actions. Glycine is recognized as an “inhibitory” neurotransmitter, and promotes natural sleep. Used as a supplement, it has helped to promote recovery from strokes and seizures, and to improve learning and memory. But in every type of cell, it apparently has the same kind of quieting, protective antistress action. The range of injuries produced by an excess of tryptophan and serotonin seems to be prevented or corrected by a generous supply of glycine. Fibrosis, free radical damage, inflammation, cell death from ATP depletion or calcium overload, mitochondrial damage, diabetes, etc., can be prevented or alleviated by glycine.
Warning: grain-fed animals tend to have imbalanced levels of omega 6/omega 3 fats in their skins.
Some foods rich in glycine:
Gelatin (ex: Great Lakes kosher beef gelatin
Skin of Pork (pigs feet and ears), Chicken (esp. feet), Turkey and Beef
Broths, soups, stews that contain animal skins, joints and connective tissues
Egg whites
Crustaceans: shrimp, crab
Whitefish
Seaweed
Mollusks: scallops
Seeds
Legumes
Why Broth is Beautiful: Essential Roles for Proline, Glycine and Gelatin
Written by Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN
Wednesday, June 18 2003 11:43
http://www.westonaprice.org/food-features/why-broth-is-beautiful
"[Evidence going back more than a century] not only established gelatin’s value to cartilage and bones but also to the skin, digestive tract, immune system, heart and muscles. ....
[P]rior to the mid 20th century, doctors recommended the addition of glycine-rich gelatin to the homemade infant formulas that were used when breast feeding was not possible. (Gotthoffer, NR, Gelatin in Nutrition and Medicine (Graylake IL, Grayslake Gelatin Company, 1945), pp. 25-37.) ....
[You can improve collagen status by adding gelatin to your diet] in the form of gelatin-rich broth used in soups, stews and sauces. This traditional food, which has nearly disappeared from the American table, fits the "you are what you eat" prescription to a T. Manufactured gelatin is also a useful item in that it is nothing less than heat-denatured collagen. However, because manufactured gelatin contains small amounts of MSG [the Great Lakes brand claims that it does not http://www.greatlakesgelatin.com/consumer/noMSG.php], it should be avoided by those who are sensitive to it."