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Non-essential Amino Acids


pharmakon
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I've always heard that all the "essential" amino acids are available when following a vegan or vegetarian diet. I'm curious about the non-essential acids, which would probably help build muscle anyway, even if they aren't "essential" to health.

 

Are there a number of amino acids only available in meat or dairy? Are there any rare, non-essential amino acids that are good to have anyway, and if so, where do you get them?

 

any other information?

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Non-essential means that our bodies can produce them on our own, and that we don't need to eat food to make them. It's the essentials that we can't produce, and need to get from food.

 

And no, there are no strands of amino acids that are in meat that can't be found in plants.

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I personally think we also don't need all the different amino acids anyway...taurine is a good example. We can get it in vegan form but most vegans never get any and live just fine

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I personally think we also don't need all the different amino acids anyway...taurine is a good example. We can get it in vegan form but most vegans never get any and live just fine

 

Is a lot of taurine synthetic?

it is in the muscle part of meat, but synthetic is in things it normally wouldn't be, like energy drinks (red bull).
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We do need amino acids, as our bodies builds certain amino acids from others. The source amino acids come from diet and from the break-down of our own protein as fuel (example, burning own muscle during exercise.)

 

Essential amino acids, as other pointed out, are certain amino acids that supposedly our bodies can not build from just any amino acids - instead those exact amino acids must be provisioned, from diet or our own protein tissue breakdown, to build them.

 

A note I would like to add: any material dietary protein source has all the essential amino acids needed. The so-called incomplete proteins are just lower in certain essential amino acids than an ideal profile, that is arbitrary.

 

Also, most of the so-called incomplete proteins are just low, in comparison to the suspected arbitrary ideal amino acid profile, by a small degree. For example rice is said to be an incomplete protein because it is lower in lysine but it is called low because for any given amount of an ideal amino acid profile protein it has ~75% of the lysine. Yet again many try to imply that it is absent in lysine. I guess these same people would argue that if they only ate 75% of a donut they did not eat one.

Edited by 9nines
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I personally think we also don't need all the different amino acids anyway...taurine is a good example. We can get it in vegan form but most vegans never get any and live just fine

 

Is a lot of taurine synthetic?

it is in the muscle part of meat, but synthetic is in things it normally wouldn't be, like energy drinks (red bull).

 

That's what I meant, I see it in lots of things, and is it synthetic, like creatine.

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I guess these same people would argue that if they only ate 75% of a donut they did not eat one.

 

I see talk about anywhere from 8 to 10 essential amino acids. I think the '10' means we need all those amino acids, but the '8' means that two of the 10 we need can be synthesized by the body from the other 8.

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I know Dr. Fuhrman recommends taurine *in certain cases.* (vegan taurine available)

Some people (and not just vegans, but it does seem vegans are more likely to be deficient) should/can supplement it. An amino acid quantitative test will tell you if you are low.

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