okay so I understand like nutrient groups and how they’re broken down for energy like with carbohydrates. I don’t understand when people eat “protein” what it means. Because a cellular protein is like a tag and as far as I understand aren’t digested for energy. So what is it that’s so important to our diet that’s called protein and is it an *actual* protein?
In: Biology
protein is just long chains of simple molecules called amino acids. When you eat something, the proteins in it are broken down into those amino acids, and then your cells rearrange them into the kinds of proteins that they need. When people call meat or other things “protein”, it just means that whatever it is has a more protein in it than other foods. For example meat is muscle tissue, and muscle cells have a lot of protein compared to other cells. But, it is made of the same amino acids that are in your cells
It’s proteins that our body can break down and repurpose into the proteins for our own bodies. All proteins are made of different combinations of amino acids after all.
Excess, unwanted, etc. protein is converted by your liver into fat. First being broken down into amino acids, and said amino acids are then turned into fatty acids through a process that’ll make you wish you picked a different uni subject.
They are the same “proteins”.
They’re important to your diet because they’re the only thing you eat that has nitrogen in large quantities. Every amino acid has an amino group of NH2–amino acid and ammonia (NH3) don’t sound alike by accident. All amino acids have the same ‘backbone’ where they link together, but each one also has a “dangly bit” called the R group. There are only 21 amino acids and your body can make 12 of them. Except you can’t make amino groups from nitrogen in the air directly so you have to eat every one your body needs which is where the base amount of protein you need comes from.
The nine you can’t make must be in your diet in sufficient quantities. This is what balanced protein means. Any animal protein is balanced since it contains enough of all nine. Plant protein can be deficient in the nine essentials. You can still balance it out by eating plants from different groups so that a deficiency of one group is supplied by another. The classic example is grains and legumes. Rice and beans, succotash, peanut butter sandwiches all combine all combine a grain with a legume for a complete protein source.
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