This Vegan Essential Aminos
Why would you not take Vegan Essential Aminos? These amino acids are exactly the same, they are just made more ethically with more transparency and they are cleaner.
Initially, we saw a problem in the types of protein, amino acid requirement and the amino acids available for those choosing to live a vegan lifestyle. This is especially true in those that also train hard and are eating for sporting performance or for body goals.
Whilst trying to find a solution to the problem within the vegan community, we discovered that the existing amino acid industry may have its own problems that the vegans can fix. The learning experience went both ways and the final product was inspired by vegan requirements, the vegan code of ethics and environmental ideals, but the end result is something we can all use and benefit from. The amino acids themselves are exactly the same. It is just the starting material and other steps that vary between the vegan aminos and non-vegan aminos.
How are aminos made?
They don’t extract aminos from plants. It is too expensive and too low yield with too much burden on the environment and potential GMO infiltration. Instead, vegan essential aminos are made through fermentation of sugars from plants; the sugars are NON-GMO and the microbes involved are also non-GMO. This is how our intestinal microbiome makes amino acids for us and them in our normal digestive process. So that is actually common sense and nice and clean with very low environmental impact.
This project has taken us over a year to complete because finding vegan essential aminos from a vegan source was extremely difficult. Many amino acids are simply not available in vegan form. We started asking what they actually are whilst also demanding the flow charts and declarations of starting material; and it is kind of really gross and horrible and not something we wanted to put our name to. They are sometimes extracted from animal products as they can get a much higher yield from a very cheap starting material that doesn’t rot easily. Unlike the vegan starting material being plants.
The non-vegan aminos are made from things like duck feathers, animal blood or animal skin, in some cases the starting material may be any combination of these three but you may never know which one. As we found out from our raw material suppliers, it is simply potluck as to which sourced material they happen to have in stock at the time. Most manufacturers and supplement companies don’t even consider this when they make their amino products as the product is based on average costings, not starting materials.
To make things even harder, when we did finally find a non-animal source of amino acid we then discovered it was made from the fermentation of sugar by bugs but GMO sources of everything; GMO corn or wheat sugar fermented by GMO mould to excrete an amino acid. ATP Science does NOT do GMO.
So, getting NON-GMO Vegan Essential aminos was the goal to provide a solution to the vegan problem. However, regardless of your omnivore/herbivore status, these aminos we have sourced for our Vegan Essential Aminos are the nicest, cleanest and most transparent ones on the market.
Amino Acid Requirements for Vegans
Everyone, yes, all humans require the 9 essential amino acids. These are; histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine.
We cannot convert or synthesize these on our own, they must come from our diet.
Vegans are rarely deficient in total dietary protein. Animal meat protein foods yield on average 20-30% protein; where the plant sources are about 10-30% protein so not a huge difference in total protein content.
But the amino acid profile can be very different.
Exclusively plant-based diets supply a different amino acid profile to those who consume animal protein (meat and dairy) as well. In the plant proteins there is less of the anabolic amino acids such as leucine (which makes up 50% of what we call BCAA (branched chain amino acids), the dietary vegan sources of hydroxyproline are almost impossible to find and eat, lack of methionine, inadequate lysine and histidine for anyone doing any extra exercise.
Deficiency of Hydroxyproline in Vegan diet
Hydroxyproline is used to make collagen in our bodies. Plants do not contain collagen and hydroxyproline is almost totally absent in a plant-based vegan diet. Hydroxyproline can be made from Proline and Vitamin C making it technically not essential; but there is a relatively low intake of proline in most vegan diets. There simply just aren’t adequate doses of Proline and Hydroxyproline available in plants and those that do contain it have such a low yield you would have to be eating it by the truckload.
If you do not have adequate Hydroxyproline you cannot support and maintain collagen. If you are training, aging, or on a campaign to be better then you need adequate collagen to support your nutritional needs;
So, there can be a massive deficit in the hydroxyproline availability in the plant-based protein group. This increased demand for hydroxyproline will also deplete proline and vitamin C stores leaving them deficient for other functions.
If inadequate resources to do all of the collagen functions;
The amino acid profile of collagen is unique.
Within collagen you typically find 3 x the amount of glycine and proline compared to all other animal and vegetable proteins; however, the most remarkable difference and unique trait is the hydroxyproline that is almost exclusively found as a part of collagen in animals. Collagen is made like a spiral or a compact helix that allows for cushioning, stretch and snap-back elasticity; the Hydroxyproline makes the sharp twisting in the structure to form the spiral helix structure. Without it, collagen loses its elasticity and bounce. The hydroxyproline of collagen explains why other proteins do not have any direct effect on collagen production. Only collagen due to the hydroxyproline content can directly feed hydroxyproline back into collagen.
Supplemental Hydroxyproline
Hydroxyproline is made specifically for inclusion into collagen. Ensuring adequate hydroxyproline will allow proline and vitamin C to maintain ideal levels and not be depleted. The rate-limiting step for collagen synthesis is nutrient availability and in particular hydroxyproline. Hydroxyproline has excellent bioavailability, absorbed intact as hydroxyproline and delivered to collagen peaking at 1-hour post ingestion.
What is Astragin® and why did we add it?
AstraGin® is a combination of ginseng and astragalus, it supports the digestion of food and the absorption of nutrients. It is a modern innovation that follows some ancient traditions.