From what I understand our cells are made of or contain various proteins. If I consume proteins from plants or animals, these are going to be different from those that I have. How does my body take these proteins I have consumed and turn them into the proteins that I need?
In: Biology
When proteins from food are digested in your gut, they are completely disassembled into their building blocks (amino acids). Your body can the distribute these amino acids to your cells. Some of these amino acids will then be used to build your own proteins, and some of them will be “fed” to your mitochondria to produce energy.
Proteins that are useful as-is, even before being broke down, are called “enzymes”. So if you ever hear that a food has healthy enzymes, that means you can directly benefit from those proteins. Typically enzymes in food are proteins that participate in digestion, before they themselves are digested. I’m not sure if there are any dietary enzymes that perform functions in our body other than digesting. Maybe someone else can answer that.
So, proteins are super big molecules. But they are made up of smaller molecules called amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids. Some of these can be made by our bodies but some we have to get from our food.
When we eat proteins our body breaks them down (digests) into their amino acids. When our bodies make new proteins we use these amino acids. It doesn’t matter whether those proteins come from plants or animals, all proteins are made of a combination of these 20 amino acids.
So, our body has used the proteins we eat to give us the amino acids we need to make new proteins.
I hope that explains it.
Latest Answers