ANCESTRAL EATING: Gelatin, pt.2

After last week's discussion of the benefits of eating gelatin, some recipes

Cow’s feet, which make excellent gelatin

Last week I talked to you about why you should be adding gelatin to your diet. Because of the abandonment of nose-to-tail eating, and because we favour lean tender cuts of meat like the fillet over less tender cuts, modern diets have very little gelatin in them at all. Which is a bad thing. Here’s my guide to adding gelatin to your diet in as simple a manner as possible.

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As I noted last week, the benefits of gelatin extend well beyond its benefits for the skin and joints (although those benefits should not be overlooked). As the late Dr Ray Peat told us, proteins — and gelatins are proteins — are signalling molecules, functioning in the same manner as hormones.

Some amino acids (the constituents of proteins), like cysteine and tryptophan, have stress-inducing, anti-thyroid effects (i.e. they affect the body’s metabolic rate). Other amino acids have protective effects. Glycine is one of those protective amino acids, and it’s found in large quantities in gelatin. Because modern diets contain large quantities of lean meat, but not gelatin-rich meat, they can have negative effectives on our health and metabolism, without the mitigating effects of amino acids like glycine.

Ray Peat noted the difference in physiological effects between a diet of nose-to-tail proteins and a diet of lean proteins and little else.

When we eat animal proteins in the traditional ways (for example, eating fish head soup, as well as the muscles, or “head-cheese” as well as pork chops, and chicken-foot soup as well as drumsticks), we assimilate a large amount of glycine and gelatin. This whole-animal balance of amino acids supports all sorts of biological process, including a balanced growth of children's tissues and organs.

When only the muscle meats are eaten, the amino acid balance entering our blood stream is the same as that produced by extreme stress, when cortisol excess causes our muscles to be broken down to provide energy and material for repair. The formation of serotonin is increased by the excess tryptophan in muscle, and serotonin stimulates the formation of more cortisol, while the tryptophan itself, along with the excess muscle-derived cysteine, suppresses the thyroid function.

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.

Eating too much lean can, in this view, be harmful to the body in a number of ways, promoting systemic stress and inflammation, which can lead to a whole variety of negative health conditions. For more information, read Peat’s essay, “Gelatin, Stress and Longevity.”

Peat recommended reducing your consumption of lean meat and increasing your consumption of gelatin-rich cuts, gelatin or glycine, which can be bought in powder form. Even if you don’t reduce your consumption of lean, you should up your consumption of gelatin. For example, he advises that if you eat a large serving of lean meat, you might want to consume five to ten grams of gelatin at the same time, “so that the amino acids enter the blood stream in balance.” Powdered gelatin can be added to all sorts of foods — “custards, mousses, ice cream, soups, sauces, cheese cake, pies, etc.” — or mixed with fruit juice to make delicious nourishing jellies.

So, with these various considerations in mind, let’s look at some simple ways to add collagen to you diet.