Skin and Bone: Protein or Collagen?

The one where we let you consider whether you might choose to supplement with both bovine collagen peptides and bone broth powder ...

Optimum 'feel good' is a prime concern for lots of us.  We live in our bodies and minds as our primary environments and it is simply more pleasant while dwelling there to move towards, well, what keeps us feeling good!  What creature doesn’t want to live a sensory life of feeling at their best? 

Before the industrialisation of food that we experience in the modern world, Mother Nature used to be in charge. These days, Big Food, with its pre-prepared and highly processed concoctions can easily make us feel alienated from source ingredients. The Government's guidance when it comes to ultra-processed food is that these are foods 'made in factories, mostly, lacking the nutrients you need for good health' and that they instead, 'contain high levels of sugar, saturated fat and salt, which can cause chronic health problems'. [*]

At WillPowders, we keep our food ingredients in our Bone Broth Protein Powders to a minimum, with only a handful of natural ingredients added. And our Hydrolysed Bovine Collage Peptides have just one ingredient - you guessed it, they are actually hydrolysed bovine collagen peptides. Both of these products could boost your amino acid intake.

Let's dig a little deeper to see what sort of nutrients are offered by these two products.

In the past, it seemed like no self-respecting, common or garden variety of great-nanna would be caught dead without having a pan of bones on the bubble. But, many of us don't tend to make our own bone broth anymore. Many of us don't buy cuts of meat that come with a bone! If you do commit to tending a bone broth bubbling on your stove top or in your slow cooker, we salute you! Bone broth could boost amino acid intake in our diets.

Of course, everyone has a theory about why we might have stopped cooking bones, but, for some of us enjoying having a few decades of living under our belts, we'd like to imagine that the space age might have more to answer to than we might guess in the way Big Food might attempt to encourage us to eat today! As the 60s ushered in moon landings, it also ushered in the whimsical idea of space food. The idea of humans existing in alien and beyond this world territories was on our TV screens and with it came the idea of novelty ‘food’ in flatpack. Maybe the idea of eating like an astronaut had seduced us? Suddenly, the idea of the sensible twin engine system of food choice and assembly from fresh and preserved foods that we’d employed for as long as we could sew together a deerskin bag veered dramatically towards only eating anything that looked like it had been assembled on Apollo 13. Boiling up a pan of beef bones suddenly seemed oddly, and, at the time, unfashionably, earthbound and certainly not something Lieutenant Uhura would be caught dead doing as she ventured across interstellar space - the TV told us so!

In essence, then, was it this point that we lost sight of the balance humans need in our complex lives between the ‘now’ foods that we can pick from the natural environment, and eat with the quick rustling up of a five ingredient recipe, and the ‘for later on’ foods that can be saved for when we need them later? Ultra-processed foods might be edible in the 'now' but they aren't in the main nutritious but they have that space age convenience.

What if the script was flipped and there were supplementary foods that could boost the amino acids in your diet, or that could be used conveniently in the now, especially when a craving rears its head, entered your consciousness? Sounds like an outer space hyper-sleep dream? Let's see ...

Bovine collagen peptides are made from the skin of cattle.  Bovine bone broth is made by boiling cattle bones.  No prizes for guessing that last fact.  But, why would we bother including both in our diet - aren’t they the same thing in different forms?  The answer is that, while incredibly similar in many ways, there are some fundamental differences between the two and then there’s also the way we actually live and want to eat for a full protein profile.  

Fundamentally, at the level of matter, although we cherish you for being a whole lot more, take away the electric currents and water and we’re made up of amino acids that have formed themselves into particular patterns.  As our bodies replace and repair, our bodies make some amino acids but we need to consume other amino acids that our bodies can’t make in order to make and mend the protein bits of us. 

This is why you could choose to have both bone broth and bovine collagen peptides as part of your range of nutrition.

With this in mind, we have made it easy to mix and match bone broth powder and/or collagen peptides should you choose to incorporate them in your diet. Across our hydrolysed bovine collagen peptides and bone broth products, you could mix and match during the day for amino acids, for example by adding collagen to your cooking sauces or one pot meals to brewing up a cosy, comforting drink or stirring up a cool pud with our protein powders.  In this way, you'll be getting on with the job of supporting gut health, tissue, bone, cardiovascular health, and skin elasticity from the collagen peptides and aiding fitness recovery goals with our protein powders.

Lady and the Tramp, Beauty and the Beast, The Princess and the Frog, Glycine and the Gut … wait a minute!  Yes, that’s right - some things do live cheek by jowl! Glycine is an amino acid found in both collagen peptides and bone broth powder. Glycine supplementation may mitigate inflammation in the gut [*]  Tight junctures are important in the gut and glycine is associated with the integrity of the gut's junctures.

One thing bone broth powder offers that collagen doesn’t is macrominerals.  These are minerals that our bodies need in relatively large amounts everyday to keep such vitals as our electrical impulses going.  Bone broth powder can offer the macrominerals potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, chloride and sodium.

Phosphorous is involved in the calcification of bones, 85% of our body’s phosphorous being in our skeleton, but we also need it in soft tissues to metabolise carbohydrates, fats and proteins.  Phosphate ions also play an important role in the body’s acid base balance.  You’ll also find magnesium in bones and muscles and it is essential for the functioning of many enzyme systems and for neuromuscular transmission.  Stabilising nerve function, maintaining bone structure, metabolising energy, muscular activity, enzyme activation and osmotic pressure maintenance are all partly under magnesium’s governance.  Chloride will help you regulate the amount of fluid and types of nutrients going in and out of cells and it helps to maintain proper PH levels, alongside stimulating the stomach acids needed for digestion, stimulating the action of nerve and muscle cells and facilitating the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide within the cells.  Sodium plays its roles in helping maintain normal blood pressure, supporting the work of nerves and muscles and regulating the body’s fluid balance.  Potassium will help regulate fluids, support nerve signals and muscle contractions. 

All in all, these macronutrients could be a busy bunch potentially going to work for your body. Tracking these macronutrients across your diet, especially when you are up against it and busy, can be tricky.  A bone broth powder might help you some of the macronutrients your body needs.