Amino Acids

Eighth grade biology taught us the importance of amino acids as the basic building blocks of life, particularly as the building blocks of proteins, which are chains of amino acids. Amino acids are proteins which come from both plant and animal sources. Amino acids are critical to life, and have many functions in metabolism. Just as the letters of the alphabet can be combined to form an almost endless variety of words, amino acids can be linked together in varying sequences to form a vast variety of proteins. The main concern for us, as humans, is whether we are getting our amino acids in the available forms for the ability of our digestive system to break down and utilize.

The human system is not designed to break down plant material so that we get only about 2% of the plant source amino acids we eat to assimilate into our nutritional grid. The ruminant species, e.g cows and deer, are able to assimilate 25% of the aminos from those same plant sources as they are designed to more rigorously masticate and more thoroughly digest the insoluble fiber in plants.

Animal sources of amino acids are far more available and natural for human consumption than the aminos found in plants. All animal products contain all the amino acids we require in the forms we can assimilate most easily. Since amino acids are not stored in the body, they need to be consumed daily. Consuming animal products daily provides for our daily requirements.

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