Chromatography Forum

Hello friends,

What's the difference. Protein is made from amino acids. Some are labelled protein powder. Some are labelled amino acids. Do they both give the same effect?

Regards
Cindy Hang

This resembles an attempt to get a second opinion
If you take that further you might say that because all proteins are made from roughly the same elements, there are only a couple of proteins in the whole wide world

Best Regards

What kind of effect are you interested in ? - we do chromatography here, not bodybuilding.

Peter

If we begin moving our HPLC equipment around, more often, it might help us build up some muscle mass

Hello friends,

Thanks for sharing your information, I know a lot of people use whey protein, but that is what has all the extra stuff in it with tons of calories, not particularly healthy, and lacking amino acids. Check out soy protein or specifically a protein powder derived from Spirulina. It's a type of algae that happens to be a "complete protein" meaning that it contains all the amino acids available in what we think of as protein. I get it from Vitamin World around here but I'm sure you could find it at your local vitamin/health food shop or certainly on the internet.

Best Regards
Cindy Hang

SPAM is also a wonderful source of protein.

Ha, ha. Great comment Peter

Best Regards

Cindy:

Some of the levity in the responses to your question reflects the fact that this forum is oriented toward analytical issues. Your question involves biochemistry in general. That said:
Most proteins contains all 20 of the amino acids that are found in proteins. How useful a particular set of proteins is for nutritional purposes is determined by the ratio of the different amino acid it contains. There are 10 amino acids that our bodies can't make (8, if you take into account the fact that 2 of the 10 could be made from precursors in the set of eight). Those are called essential amino acids. The protein from meat, eggs and milk (hence your whey) contains pretty much the right ratios; these are called "whole proteins". While cereal grains can contain a significant amount of protein, they tend to be low in the essential amino acids lysine and methionine (hence the interest by Big Agriculture companies in developing high-lysine varieties of corn and high-methionine soybeans). You need to supplement those proteins with protein that does have more of the missing amino acids. This is usually done by combining foods: rice + beans; potatos + milk; soybeans + Brazil nuts; etc. Now, in order to assess the nutritional value of this Spirulina, check its amino acid ratio against what you'd find with meat, egg or milk protein. If it's a good match, then by all means use it as a protein source if you have qualms about eating a steak.

Hi Andy

She's selling, not buying.

Peter

Maybe, Peter, but she's couched it in a manner that left that ambiguous and I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Couldn't hurt in case she's sincere.

I'll give you good odds that Ms Hang is a spammer. She posted the exact same "query" at least twice, and neither was in the water cooler section where it belonged. Her response is a non-sequitur, and has nothing at all to do with chromatography, so Cindy is probably a robot monitoring responses and firing off generic replies about dubious products.

Peter