Amino acid profile: the essential amino acids in what you eat

An amino acid profile (in Spanish and Catalan, an aminograma) lists the amino acids in a protein and how much of each there is. Two foods with the same grams of protein can have very different profiles, and that changes what your body can do with them. vitaloop shows the amino acid profile of every food and every meal you log.

vitaloop is free by default, with no ads. Without paying you log food, drinks and supplements and see calories, macros and micronutrients. The amino acid profile is free too, on catalogue foods, on your meals and in Analytics. Pro adds the AI on top: logging by photo or voice, the weekly report and patterns.

What is an amino acid profile?

It is the breakdown of a protein into its amino acids: how many grams of leucine, lysine, tryptophan and each of the others a food or a meal contains. Labels and most apps stop at total protein; the profile splits it up.

In Spanish medicine, aminograma also names a blood or urine test that measures the amino acids circulating in the body. That is a different thing: the profile in this article describes what you eat, not what is in your blood, and it cannot diagnose anything.

The 9 essential amino acids and how much you need

The body can make some amino acids from others, but not these nine: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine. If one runs short, protein synthesis slows even when the rest are plentiful. In 2007 an expert consultation of the WHO, FAO and United Nations University estimated what an adult needs, in milligrams per kilo of body weight a day (WHO/FAO/UNU, 2007):

• Histidine: 10 mg
• Isoleucine: 20 mg
• Leucine: 39 mg
• Lysine: 30 mg
• Methionine + cysteine: 15 mg
• Phenylalanine + tyrosine: 25 mg
• Threonine: 15 mg
• Tryptophan: 4 mg
• Valine: 26 mg

For someone weighing 70 kg, that is about 2.7 g of leucine and 2.1g of lysine a day. These are average population requirements, not a personal target. For total protein, EFSA's reference intake for adults is 0.83 g per kilo of body weight a day (EFSA, 2012), the same figure the WHO gives as a safe intake.

Five more (arginine, cysteine, glycine, proline and tyrosine) are called conditionally essential: the body makes them, but in some situations not as fast as it needs them. Tyrosine, for instance, is made from phenylalanine, which is why the WHO counts the two together. The remaining four you see in vitaloop (alanine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid and serine) are non-essential.

Why the profile matters, not just the grams

To build a protein, the body needs all of its amino acids at once. The essential one in shortest supply relative to need, the limiting amino acid, sets how much of a protein can be used. That idea underlies DIAAS, the method the FAO recommended in 2013 to measure protein quality, replacing PDCAAS (FAO, 2013).

Leucine and protein per meal

Leucine has a role of its own: besides being a building block, it activates mTOR, the signal that switches on muscle protein synthesis after exercise (Norton and Layman, 2006). That is why the amount in each meal is worth knowing, not only the daily total.

On how much protein a meal should carry:

• In six young men after resistance exercise, muscle protein synthesis peaked with 20 g of egg protein; 40 g raised it no further (Moore et al., 2009).
• Older men (around 71) needed more protein per meal to reach that peak: about 0.40 g per kilo of body weight, against 0.24 g in younger men (Moore et al., 2015).
• In eight adults, about 30 g of protein at each of three meals gave 24-hour muscle protein synthesis 25 % higher than putting most of it at dinner, with the same total protein (Mamerow et al., 2014).

These are small studies that measure protein synthesis over hours, not muscle mass over months. They suggest distribution can matter, especially with age, but they do not set a number that fits everyone. How much total protein makes sense when you eat less is covered in what is the best app for weight loss.

Plant and animal protein

In an analysis of protein isolates, essential amino acids made up 21–22 % of oat, lupin and wheat protein and between 32 % and 43 % of egg, casein, milk and whey protein. Methionine and lysine were lower in the plant proteins, and leucine ranged from 5.1 % in hemp to 13.5 % in corn (Gorissen et al., 2018). In the few trials available, soy and wheat protein gave a smaller muscle response than several animal proteins (van Vliet et al., 2015).

That does not make a plant-based diet second-rate: a mix of plant proteins can meet amino acid requirements (Young and Pellett, 1994), because what one lacks another supplies. Lentils with rice are the classic example. The meal's amino acid profile shows you the result of the combination instead of leaving you to assume it.

How to see the amino acid profile in vitaloop

The Amino acid profile section shows all 18 amino acids, in three places:

• On every food you open from search.
• On every meal in your diary, adding up everything you ate.
• In Analytics, in the protein detail: the daily average of the essential nine.

Many composition tables give a food's protein but not its amino acids. Where the value is missing, vitaloop's nutrition intelligence system estimates it and marks it with ≈, for example ≈ 0.65 g. Tap the value to see its range (more in how we calculate).

For scanned products, the amino acid profile is part of the full panel vitaloop estimates with Pro, or when you photograph the label (more in what vitamins and minerals are in a scanned product).

The WHO requirements above help you place your own numbers. To adjust a specific diet, talk to a registered dietitian.

Is vitaloop for you?

If you want to see which amino acids each meal brings and how the proteins you combine complement each other, vitaloop is for you. It is a free download on the App Store and Google Play, for iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets.

Sources

• WHO/FAO/UNU. Protein and amino acid requirements in human nutrition. WHO Technical Report Series 935, 2007.
• FAO. Dietary protein quality evaluation in human nutrition. FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 92, 2013.
• EFSA. Scientific Opinion on Dietary Reference Values for protein. EFSA Journal 2012;10(2):2557.
• Norton LE, Layman DK. Leucine regulates translation initiation of protein synthesis in skeletal muscle after exercise. J Nutr 2006;136:533S–537S.
• Moore DR et al. Ingested protein dose response of muscle and albumin protein synthesis after resistance exercise in young men. Am J Clin Nutr 2009;89:161–168.
• Moore DR et al. Protein ingestion to stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis requires greater relative protein intakes in healthy older versus younger men. J Gerontol A 2015;70:57–62.
• Mamerow MM et al. Dietary protein distribution positively influences 24-h muscle protein synthesis in healthy adults. J Nutr 2014;144:876–880.
• Gorissen SHM et al. Protein content and amino acid composition of commercially available plant-based protein isolates. Amino Acids 2018;50:1685–1695.
• van Vliet S et al. The skeletal muscle anabolic response to plant- versus animal-based protein consumption. J Nutr 2015;145:1981–1991.
• Young VR, Pellett PL. Plant proteins in relation to human protein and amino acid nutrition. Am J Clin Nutr 1994;59(5 Suppl):1203S–1212S.