Eating Lots Of Gelatin But No Meat OK?

Bluebell

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Recently I've not been eating meat, no particular reason, I just haven't felt like it. I do eat liver weekly.

I wonder if it's still OK to eat large amounts of gelatin on a meat-free diet, would I risk tipping the balance of amino acids too far in the other direction?
 
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j.

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I wonder if your body will give you signals, e.g., make you crave ribs.
 

Jenn

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I depend on the person. A growing child needs tryptophan, and adult does not. I ate very little meat ( like once or twice every couple of months) for a few years and lots of gelatin and potatoes due to digestion/inflammation issues. I ate about 2-3 lbs per month of gelatin. Friends of mine had issues with too much gelatin and overloaded their kidneys and gained 15 lbs. A little case of if a little is good, more is better. You don't ever HAVE to eat meat and it is good to always have gelatin in the same meal as meat, but meat can be an excellent source of protein and minerals if it comes from a healthy animal.

Your body will tell you if you need another protein source on any particular day. Some days it is my only source or protein, maybe with a little milk in my coffee too. Other days,I need a little more oomph.
 
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Bluebell

Bluebell

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Jenn said:
I depend on the person. A growing child needs tryptophan, and adult does not. I ate very little meat ( like once or twice every couple of months) for a few years and lots of gelatin and potatoes due to digestion/inflammation issues. I ate about 2-3 lbs per month of gelatin. Friends of mine had issues with too much gelatin and overloaded their kidneys and gained 15 lbs. A little case of if a little is good, more is better. You don't ever HAVE to eat meat and it is good to always have gelatin in the same meal as meat, but meat can be an excellent source of protein and minerals if it comes from a healthy animal.

Your body will tell you if you need another protein source on any particular day. Some days it is my only source or protein, maybe with a little milk in my coffee too. Other days,I need a little more oomph.

Thanks a lot, that's food for thought. I did not realise that people could overeat gelatin and get issues from it - do you happen to know how much they were eating?

I just recently started having 50g gelatin per day. Reasons are, when I was severely hypothyroid my body was breaking down its own skin, collagen and muscles so I am trying to repair that. Also Ray says it is so good for sleep. Plus my gut's OK now but had problems in the past so I thought perhaps gelatin would help with repair work.

Do you know any warning signs I should look out for that indicate too much gelatin? Because gelatin's quite weird tasting I don't really get any craving or desire for it, so I'm eating because of the decision to. I will look out for any aversion developing.

I was having about 50g of lamb or beef nightly, but recently I've just been eating on instinct and don't feel like it (also feeling lazy about the cooking). Now, my other protein source is dairy (milk and cheese), sometimes the white in one egg.

I guess I'll stay tuned in. J. good point about the ribs! I have had red meat cravings in the past so I'll keep the feelers out for that.
 

Jenn

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For my friend, she was overtaxing her kidneys and feeling bloated. She was eating it as a supplement, not as food. For me, I was actually, finally getting protein I could use and felt energized and stronger and less stressed. If you have diabetes, cancer, any inflammatory disease focusing on gelatin is highly beneficial. If you are just trying to be healthy, eat it with muscle meat so you are eating the "whole animal" and don't worry about it. Liver would fall in the muscle meat category amino acid wise. Overall, a low tryptophan diet is beneficial for adults.
 

charlie

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I think if I was also having milk and cheese, I would not worry too much about going high intake on gelatin.
 

4peatssake

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Charlie said:
I think if I was also having milk and cheese, I would not worry too much about going high intake on gelatin.
I agree. Ray Peat has recommended eating as much as 100 g of gelatin for adults.

Ray Peat said:
In some of the older studies, therapeutic results improved when the daily gelatin was increased. Since 30 grams of glycine was commonly used for treating muscular dystrophy and myasthenia gravis, a daily intake of 100 grams of gelatin wouldn't seem unreasonable, and some people find that quantities in that range help to decrease fatigue. For a growing child, though, such a large amount of refined gelatin would tend to displace other important foods. The National Academy of Sciences recently reviewed the requirements for working adults (male and female soldiers, in particular), and suggested that 100 grams of balanced protein was needed for efficient work. For adults, a large part of that could be in the form of gelatin.

Gelatin, stress, longevity

That entire article blows my mind. OK, so they all blow my mind. But rereading it today was wow.

Ray Peat said:
When I began teaching endocrinology, some of my students didn't want to hear about anything except “lock and key” endocrinology, in which “a hormone” signals certain cells that have a suitable receptor for that hormone. But the studies of Hans Selye and Albert Szent-Gyorgyi made it clear that Pavlov's global, holistic approach to the organism in its environment was the soundest scientific basis for physiology, including endocrinology. A cell's response to a hormone depended on the state of the cell. Nutrients and metabolites and hormones and neurotransmitters all modify the cell's sensitivity to its surroundings. The assumptions of “molecular biology,” as generally understood, are fundamentally mistaken.

The idea of fixed requirements for specific nutrients, and especially the idea that rapid physical growth was the way to determine the essentiality of a substance, led to a monstrous distortion of the official dietary recommendations. Business, industry, government, and the health professions collaborated in the propagation of an ideology about nutrition that misrepresented the nature of the living organism.

Most studies of the nutritional requirements for protein have been done for the agricultural industries, and so have been designed to find the cheapest way to get the maximum growth in the shortest time. The industry isn't interested in the longevity, intelligence, or happiness of their pigs, chickens, and lambs. The industry has used chemical growth stimulants in combination with the foods that support rapid growth at least expense. Antibiotics and arsenic and polyunsaturated fatty acids have become part of our national food supply because they produce rapid weight gain in young animals.

Bold and underline are mine.
 

jyb

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Personally, I've found that gelatin made a difference even if I didn't eat meat in weeks.

I'm also not sure whether tryptophan in dairy is ok due to the dairy nutrients preventing its conversion to serotonin. That prevention is dependent on the nutrients increasing metabolism. For someone like me who is still pretty hypothyroid, I'm not sure whether it still holds, and the difference that gelatin makes to me even during times of no meat confirms this.
 
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Bluebell

Bluebell

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4peatsake, thanks for those quotes. The last one especially was nice to read again.

I suppose as far as amino acids go, I can get all the cysteine/tryptophan/"meat aminos" I need from the dairy. While getting my "animal bits" aminos from gelatin.

jyb, so what are the beneficial differences you notice when you take gelatin?
 

jyb

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Other than the fact that it's an easy way to increase protein amount (it's hard to get to 80 or 100 grams with just dairy) and its relaxing. I usually notice after a few days if I forgot to take gelatin, I'll be more nervous and my insomnia may aggravate.
 

jyb

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Rolan said:
Jenn, what's your reasoning for adults not needing tryptophan compared to children?

RP's article on glycine.

In addition, I believe that it's more difficult to maintain muscle mass on gelatin only. This means that some amino acids like tryptophan are useful for growing. Also, as children don't have a damaged metabolism (yet), they wouldn't be harmed as much if at all by tryptophan.
 

gretchen

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It's certainly better to eat gelatin by itself than to eat meat without gelatin. Gelatin helps to achieve amino acid balance and over time allows you to take in less of the "bad" pro-inflammatory aminos- ? methionine and tryptophan, I think. These are pro-aging and restricting them can make you live longer.

I personally have noticed nothing but good effects from gelatin. I think that is interesting Jen that you say some people gain weight on it. I wonder why that is.
 

superhuman

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im working on increasing my gelatin intake as well and my protein sources are just dairy and fruit. I try getting 40-50g gelatin a day but i struggle in terms of how to get it, i will try just put it in milk, coffee etc or make gummy bears since i got a recipe where the ratio is just 2:1 in terms of sugar:protein where all the protein is from gelatin
 

Hugh Johnson

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I get most of my protons from gelatin, dairy coming in second. Feels good. Meat just makes me feel worse, usually.

The way I get lots of gelatin is by pouring it into juice, shaking hard, and maybe adding some salt. This might feed bad bacteria in some people.
 

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