Protein

Protein makes up the building blocks of your body!  It allows you to grow and repair cells and makes sure your muscles, organs and immune system work at their best all of the time.  Different proteins do different jobs – some make haemoglobin in your red blood cells so you couldn’t carry oxygen around your body.  Others make up the cardiac muscle (cardiac just means ‘heart’), build up your muscles, repair your body after injury and protect you from disease by making antibodies!  Everybody really needs protein! 

Protein is made up of smaller parts called amino acids.  There are many different types of amino acids, but you only really need to know about 20 of these that combine to make the different types of proteins you need to stay healthy.  Your body can make most of these amino acids but the rest (there are 9) you have to get from the food you eat.  These are called the nineessential amino acids (Table 1 has a list of all of the amino acids you need).

You get essential amino acids from foods like meat, fish, eggs and milk.  These contain all 9 of the essential amino acids while vegetable foods like beans and nuts only have some of them.  The best protein foods to eat are meats like beef, chicken, pork, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, yoghurt, beans like soy, lentils, pinto, kidney black beans and nuts and seeds like peanuts and cashews (without the salt!), almonds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and flax seeds.  Even foods like peanut butter have protein but remember they have a lot of fat and some sugar as well!  Remember to eat a balanced diet, especially if you are vegetarian, to make sure you get all the different amino acids you need! 

Your body can’t store protein, even as amino acids so you need to eat protein foods every day to make sure you have enough to cover all the growth and repair your body needs to do.

Your amino acids

		NAME OF THE AMINO ACID		WHERE IT COMES FROM
		Alanine			Made in your body
		Arginine			Made in your body
		Cysteine			Made in your body
		Aspartic acid			Made in your body
		Glutamic acid			Made in your body
		Glutamine			Made in your body
		Glycine			Made in your body
		Histidine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Isoleucine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Leucine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Lysine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Methionine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Phenylalanine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Proline			Made in your body
		Serine			Made in your body
		Threonine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Tryptophan			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet
		Tyrosine			Made in your body
		Valine			This in an essential amino acid – you get it from your diet