A prototype innovative digital system for calculating the protein value of foods, whole meals and menus cont.
At the beginning of this article I want to explain quite deeply rooted belief of readers and my interlocutors that consumed “proteins are absorbed into the body” and “are built into the tissues of our organs”. Well, it should be clearly emphasized that such an interpretation of the processes of using proteins is wrong and leads to the omission of important processes taking place in our body. The above misspelling about “protein absorption” suggests that all types of protein eaten in our meals, after passing through our digestive system, enter the bloodstream with the same chemical structure as they were found in a protein meal. That is, in the form of long and three-dimensional chains, and that in such a complete form they are built into the appropriate places of our organs. Nothing could be more wrong.
Proteins are also broken down like carbohydrates or fats. Polysaccharides are broken down in digestive processes into simple sugars, such as glucose from starch or glucose and fructose from sucrose. Commonly fats eaten in the form of fatty acid triglycerides are broken down into glycerin and various types of fatty acids with different lengths of their hydrocarbon chains.
ALL the consumed proteins are broken down into their basic building blocks, which are protein amino acids which enter the blood from the intestines where the digestive system is working. Therefore, it should be borne in mind that no protein in its original structure enters the bloodstream, but only resulting from its decomposition single amino acids. These are a supplement to the base of amino acid reserves in the human body, from which all human cells derive the single essential amino acids (EAA) they need to create their own proteins needed at a given moment.
So there can be no question of any “protein absorption” or “collagen absorption” from food into human tissues, but only about using the amino acids that create them to build new structures of human proteins from scratch, building them according to the plan of our DNA, amino acid by amino acid , from the first to the last element of the protein chain.
For these reasons, when we talk about the need to consume the right types and amounts of proteins in the daily menu, we primarily aim to obtaining from daily meals a mixture of individual essential amino acids, in other words essential, in sufficient quantity to ensure 100% of the daily requirement of EAA for all processes of rebuilding own proteins in all tissues.
It should be mentioned that “supplies” of amino acids from eaten dishes constitute only about 15% of the daily requirement for the processes of building and rebuilding our tissues taking place every second of our lives. So you can ask where our body gets this much greater amount of EAA in the amount of 85% if not from the daily food?
We have to imagine the mechanisms of “recycling” occurring permanently in our body, which as a result are the largest source of the above-mentioned 85% of amino acids, used for the purpose of rebuilding several billion cells dying in each second of our lives.
With about 80 trillion cells making up the body of a single adult billions of cells in all our organs and tissues in one second are broken down by the cells of our immune system in the lymph into their basic “building blocks”, that is, into amino acids. This means that all types of “building materials” of permanently broken down human proteins are not found in the blood of our bloodstream, but in the lymph of the lymphatic system. The lymph also contains large amounts of amino acids derived from the immunological activity of the immune system that destroys all pathogens (bacteria, viruses, parasites or foreign proteins) by breaking them down into amino acids. It means that the lymph, not the blood, contains the above-mentioned 85% of the amino acids needed for the reconstruction.