Talk:Essential amino acid

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 January 2020 and 8 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SeumMondal23.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:51, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

What happened?
I would have thought this subject is pretty important stuff regarding nutrition. I came here because limiting amino acid redirects here, yet nothing is mentioned about that subject. Going through the history of the article, I see there was a section on that subject way back in 2009, but it has been replaced by a text with inaccurate promotion of vegetarianism. I understand why a vegetarian might like to obfuscate such data, but that is probably a bad idea -you guys need protein too, irrespective if you get it from a complete source such as meat, eggs or milk, or if you get it by carefully combining different plant products. I don't really see the point of hiding information on limiting amino acids: if you eat rice and beans combined you basically have a complete protein source. The point is: if you eat meat, no problem, but if you eat only a single plant-based foodstuff like maize with nothing else, you will have deficiencies. Simple.

In order to repair this page I will re-add the info from 2009 and go through the vegetarian promotionalism to delete inaccuracies. Although I actually think "limiting amino acid" needs it's own page. Cheers, Leo Breman (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * How about providing a diff edit so we don't have to rummage to find something that was added/removed 10 years ago? I also couldn't find anything in the current article that qualifies as "inaccurate promotion of vegetarianism." Best to clarify your comments before making the proposed revisions. Rhode Island Red (talk) 20:45, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi Rhode Island Red.


 * Diff edit: Yeah, shoulda done that.
 * My point: info about "limiting amino acid" had completely disappeared by 2010. Information about meat/milk/eggs being a complete protein had disappeared.
 * Inaccurate promotion of vegetarianism: If you check the edits I just finished making, and the edit comments, you will see what I am talking about. That section was off. I feel I repaired it now. As it now says again, accurately reflecting the sources which were already here, there is nothing unhealthy about eating only plants, as long as you combine foods.
 * I see there is something going round on internet now called the "complete protein myth" which is a popular myth among (some) vegetarians. This is misleading -it is true that all plants contain all amino acids to some degree, but the amino acid which is limiting is not present at sufficient quantities. Take maize: it is deficient in lysine which is limiting amino acid in this case, but cornmeal still contains 0.265 g per 100g, which is 13% of what you need. Ergo, you could eat 769g and you would reach you daily dietary intake, but it is misleading to claim it is therefore a food with a complete protein source. If you ate 500 gram of nshima a day you would eventually get sick and die, but if you ate the same amount of meat, or a combination of beans and maize, you wouldn't die (at least, not from protein deficiency). I hope you understand it now,  Leo Breman (talk) 21:47, 3 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Done with this now. Give it a few years and vegetarians will have screwed it up again, I'll warrant. I'm more used to calculating feed for other livestock, but when it comes down to it, calculating feed for humans is really the same. When vampires rule the earth and we're all in pens, a cost effective and nutritious fodder will be a tepid mash of a few hundred gram of mealy-meal, bit more than 100g soya, a pinch of salt, a few mealworms and green leaves thrown in for the B12 and C, and maybe some antibiotics; that should give a good FCR & fatten us up good for the harvest at ~16yrs when the growth curve flattens. Cheers,  Leo Breman (talk) 01:45, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for noticing and cleaning up! DMacks (talk) 02:51, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Essential amino acids in plants new paragraph needed
There is a suggestion in the article that only animal-based food can provide all essential amino acids (EAAs). That is not true and should be corrected. Most of the plants contain all EAAs. Looking at Swedish Food Agancy's "Amino acids in food" also checking ingredients at FoodData Central we can see that most of the plant-based food contain all EAAs. Although most of the plants have low EAAs content there are examples that soybeans, beans, nuts, quinoa are rich in EAAs. Soybeans meal contain actually more EAAs in total than beef, chicken or fish and it has the lowest sample food required to provide a total amount of EAAs equal to the recommended daily sum of total EAAs.

Furthermore:

Plant Foods Have a Complete Amino Acid Composition

"Soy, brown rice, pea, corn, and potato protein have essential amino acid contents that meet the requirements as recommended by the WHO/FAO/UNU (WHO/FAO/UNU Expert Consultation 2007) (Fig. 2). In addition, the essential amino acid content of potato protein (37%) is in fact greater when compared with casein (34%) and egg (32%). These data suggest that certain plant-based proteins could theoretically provide sufficient essential amino acids to allow a robust postprandial stimulation of muscle protein synthesis."

Well, I think the article needs improvement and update regarding EAAs in plant-based food.

Regards Guniarz (talk) 14:09, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

biochemistry
nonessential 112.79.96.23 (talk) 13:28, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Is taurine really an amino acid?
This is the first time I have seen taurine included in a list of amino acids.

Taurine is referred to as an "amino acid" in the article. It is a common misconception that taurine is an amino acid according to https://sciencenotes.org/why-taurine-is-not-an-amino-acid/

"In addition, cysteine, tyrosine, and arginine are considered semiessential amino acids, and taurine a semiessential aminosulfonic acid in children. The metabolic pathways that synthesize these monomers are not fully developed." says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid in its *only* mention of taurine. So is taurine an aminosulfonic acid rather than an amino acid? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfamic_acid says, "Sulfamic acid, also known as amidosulfonic acid, amidosulfuric acid, aminosulfonic acid, sulphamic acid and sulfamidic acid, is a molecular compound with the formula H3NSO3." The article makes no mention of amino acids. So it seems that an aminosulfonic acid is not an amino acid. Polar Apposite (talk) 16:41, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

RDA of essential amino acids table misleading
US NAM figures for RDAs of EAAs/BCAAs are given on the referenced source in "mg/g of protein" rather than "mg/kg of body weight", which makes this table confusing to look at, I believe the US NAM figures all need to be multiplied by 0.8 (the amount of protein per kg weight that is recommended in that same paper), for the numbers to be in a consistent unit. Threeheadedpuppy (talk) 14:29, 18 February 2024 (UTC)