Collagen, essential for healthy skin, joints, hair, and nails, makes up a large part of our body’s protein. Consuming protein-rich foods such as lean meats, fish, eggs, and plant-based sources aids collagen production. Vitamin C, found in citrus, bell peppers, kiwis, and berries, is also crucial. Bone broth and collagen supplements are viable alternatives to food sources.
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What Can I Eat to Support Collagen in My Body?
Transcript
Tired skin, creaky joints, thinning hair, all of these things could point to a lack of collagen in your diet. Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. It makes up about 25 to 35% of total body protein, and your body needs to make about one pound of collagen every five days to support your skin, your hair, your nails, and your joints. So what can you do to support collagen production? I’m Natasha, a nutritionist, and here are my top food recommendations for supporting collagen in your body. There Are many things to consider when it comes to collagen production, but the two main categories you need to focus on are protein and vitamin C. So to help your body keep up with the collagen demands that we talked about earlier, it needs protein rich foods that contain the building blocks or amino acids that are needed to make collagen. Some protein rich foods, as we know are lean meats, fish, eggs. Personally, I love fish like salmon and anchovies, and I try to add those into my diet regularly. You could also include a good variety of plant-based protein sources like organic soy or legumes that can provide your body with some of the amino acids needed to make collagen as well. Side note, good quality protein shakes are a nice option as well. They, they’re super convenient, especially if you’re struggling to meet your daily protein needs through food alone. The next is vitamin C, so you know that your body actually needs vitamin C to make collagen. Vitamin C is an antioxidant. It helps to support healthy collagen levels in our body, but it’s actually a rate limiting ingredient in collagen production, so that means that it’s absolutely necessary to have vitamin C in order to make collagen. Some vitamin C rich foods, as we know, are citrus bell peppers, kiwis, and berries. Just as a couple of examples, personally, I love raspberries and kiwi, and I like to add those into my diet regularly. So the question is, is food enough? Can we get all the collagen that we need through food? Like what about bone broth? If you want more information on food sources of collagen and how they compare to, let’s say, collagen supplements, check out the links in the description down below.