Essential Amino Acids...
The Building Blocks of 25,000 Proteins

As you might have gathered, essential amino acids have something to do with protein.

If there still is such a thing, my preference would be in the form of an organic, antibiotic-free, hormone-free medium-rare rib eye or an end-cut prime rib instead of a meal replacement drink any day. Amino acids are, in fact, the building blocks of all proteins.

Most knowledgeable sources say there are 8 Essential amino acids and four others that are essential nutrients for children and babies since they have not yet developed the ability to make them on their own.

There are eight other aminos that must be administered to certain populations since they can't synthesize enough. These are usually said to be conditionally essential. So other than those, the rest of the amino acids can be synthesized by the body from other amino acids and are non-essential.

Any normal person should be able to get all the essential amino acids they need from eggs, beef, beans, seafood, milk, dairy, soy products and a wide assortment of vegetables. I gave up cow's milk a long time ago in favor of light soy milk although the only time I use it is on my morning cereal.

In fact, eggs, meaning free range, pastured, organic eggs, are the most perfect food we can eat when it comes to the eight essential amino acids. The proportion of amino acids in eggs is extremely close to those in the human body.

When compared to corn meal, for example, the amino acid content in the corn product doesn't even come close to that of eggs, except for leucine which is about the same. Feeding factory farmed egg layers a corn based diet degrades the amino acid content of their eggs.

Just be aware that those supermarket eggs, milk, chicken, pork and beef all came from factory farms. Want to know what a factory farm is? They are an animals hell on earth; watch the DVD video Food, Inc. sometime or read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.

With factory farmed meat and dairy, besides the amino acids, you're getting a load of antibiotics, hormones and bacteria and setting yourself up to be totally antibiotic resistant when one of the superbugs decides to take up residence in your lungs or intestines. The truth is, we can get all the protein we need from plant sources and stay a lot healthier in the process.

If you're not a normal person and are into bodybuilding and want to look like The Hulk, then you best supplement with some heavy duty amino acid products.

Since essential amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and proteins are vital to muscle tissue, then all types of strenuous physical activity relating to sports, energy, recovery, and muscle strength gains are critically linked to amino acids.

The heading above asked the question, "Where do we get Amino Acids?" Well, if you want to get your amino acids from beef, then the thing to look for is free range, grass fed beef; no hormones and no non-essential antibiotics.

Most supermarket beef is factory farmed, meaning it may have started out in a pasture but was finished off in a commerical feedlot on a diet of corn, soybeans, chicken litter and assorted other trash. The idea of the corn finishing is to add pounds quickly and marble the meat with fat.

One could compare Omaha Steaks that are feed lot finished and irradiated to kill the e-coli with Hearst Ranch that is all grassland pastured right up to slaughter. Both offer mail order beef but the Hearst product will be the healty choice and a little higher in price. It's worth it.

Since the word "protein" has been thrown around, let's give it an overview. We already said that proteins are made of essential amino acids.

The amino acids are arranged in a chain where the sequence of acids is determined by a gene and incorporated into the genetic code. So it could be deduced that proteins are integral to genetics and therefore, our DNA.

Those 20 amino acids link together to make the approximately 25,000 different proteins in the human body. If that's not awesome enough, consider that each one has a unique function.

Proteins participate in every single process within living cells. Many proteins are enzymes that perform as catalysts in metabolism. They have structural and mechanical functions in muscles and the cytoskeleton in cells that maintain the cells shape. Other proteins are involved in cellular communication, immune responses, binding cells together and in replication of cells.

We will list the essential amino acids and their function but not go into great depth on each one:

The four needed by infants and children are:

Moving right along, next we will visit the essentials of fats and fatty acids.

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