Glutamine is a remarkable amino acid
because it can fuel your intestinal lining,
strengthen the gut barrier
and support overall gut health.
In fact, the cells lining your GI tract love it so much
they can go full Joey Tribbiani
and gobble it up directly.
So while your muscles may love protein,
your gut prefers glutamine.
In fact, here's world leading research scientist,
Dr. Dominic D'Agostino
explaining to Dr. Rhonda Patrick
just how much your gut loves glutamine.
- The gut's gonna be very greedy
when it comes to glutamine. - It's very greedy.
- So if it wasn't clear already,
glutamine is your gut's best friend.
In today's video,
we're going to look at how you can get more glutamine
in your diet.
And we'll do that course,
by looking at the best glutamine-rich foods
so you can really prioritize which foods to eat.
We'll even rank them
from highest glutamine content to lowest.
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
So first up, which foods contain glutamine?
Well, if you've already done some research
into glutamine-rich foods,
you probably read a few articles online
or seen some videos on YouTube.
They all look pretty similar.
You'll get a list of protein-rich foods
like chicken, beef, and eggs.
Plus some vegetables like cabbage
as well as other foods like nuts.
In fact, here's Stanford University's very own
Dr. Andrew Huberman,
a neuro scientist and host
of the very popular Huberman Lab Podcast
discussing which foods are rich in glutamine.
- Glutamine is rich in protein-rich foods
things like beef, chicken, fish, dairy products, eggs,
but also for you non-animal food consuming people out there,
vegetables including beans, cabbage once again,
spinach, parsley, things of that sort.
So those foods contain glutamine.
- Now, while this sort of list is interesting,
it's not extremely useful.
After all, you're probably wondering how much glutamine
is actually in each food?
What other foods are high in glutamine?
And of course, which foods are the highest in glutamine?
But here's the thing.
It's really hard to find data
on how much glutamine is in foods.
For example, you won't find it in the USDA Database
and you won't find it
in other credible nutritional databases like ESHA.
And so unsurprisingly,
most experts simply don't answer these questions.
And of the few experts that do try to answer them,
well, they often end up
confusing glutamate or glutamic acid with glutamine,
meaning their answers are not very accurate.
Of course, here at Essential Stacks,
we are glutamine experts
as we make Gut L Glutamine,
one of the most popular glutamine powders available.
So as you can imagine,
our research team has the answers for you
that no one else does.
And that's exactly what we'll focus on now.
So in terms of what foods are high in glutamine,
the general rule is
if it has a significant amount of protein,
it will also have a good amount of glutamine.
And that's because glutamine
is one of the main amino acids you'll find in protein.
To find out exactly how much glutamine is in protein,
we had to do some digging into the scientific literature.
Thankfully, we found this 2000 research paper
published in the World Journal of Surgery
where researchers found, quote,
"Most naturally occurring food proteins contained
"4% to 8% of their acid residues as glutamine", end quote.
In other words, roughly 6% on average
of the protein in foods comes from glutamine.
So what does this all mean for you?
Well, let's illustrate it by showing an example.
So say you ate an eight ounce
or 240 gram serving of steak.
Using the USDA Database,
we can say steak in this instant,
strip or porterhouse,
contains about 22.7 grams of protein per 100 grams.
That would mean your filet of steak
would have 54.5 grams of total protein in it.
And if roughly 6% of that protein
is in the form of glutamine,
it means we can say there's likely around 3.27 grams
of glutamine in the steak.
Now that you can see how the protein content of food
determines whether it is high in glutamine or not,
let's run these numbers for the 10 foods
Dr. Huberman mentioned in his video
and see whether they're really good sources
of glutamine or not.
Just before we look at how much glutamine is in these foods,
it is worth mentioning that a research team
at Essential Stacks has pulled the protein content
of the food straight from the USDA Foods Database.
That way the numbers are all consistent with each other.
So first up, let's look at beef.
As we can see here,
beef has 26 grams of protein in every 100 grams of meat.
And if 6% of this is glutamine,
then we can say there is 1.56 grams of glutamine
in every 100 grams.
Now let's run those numbers
and see how chicken, fish, dairy products and eggs look.
So now we can see the glutamine content
of these other animal-based foods,
which Dr. Huberman mentioned
as being good sources of glutamine.
As you can see, chicken, fish and cheese
are all delivering sizeable amounts of glutamine,
roughly in line with beef,
while eggs are delivering about half as much
and milk is delivering just a fraction of the glutamine.
Now let's look at the plant-based foods
Dr. Huberman mentioned.
Okay, so this is interesting.
Beans, in this case,
we use pinto beans as proxy for beans,
are delivering a very respectable amount of glutamine,
almost on par with the animal-based foods.
By contrast, cabbage, spinach and parsley
clearly have much less glutamine,
and that's not surprising
since they don't contain much protein.
Now while this data is interesting,
it's not very useful
since the serving size of these foods
can differ quite a lot.
For example, most people will eat
more than 100 grams of beef in a meal.
Well, almost no one,
except for maybe our French friends across the pond,
is going to eat 100 grams of parsley in a sitting.
So let's look at how much glutamine you'll enjoy
per serving of each food.
And just before we show you the data,
it's worth mentioning that our research team debated
what constitutes a typical serving size of these foods.
After all, there is so much
conflicting info out there on this.
For example, if you look at the American Heart Association,
they recommend three ounces of meat as a serving size
but here's the thing.
That is not very reflective
of how much people eat in real life.
So we worked hard to find the right balance
for serving sizes of each food.
And you can see what we believe
is a typical serving size on your screen now.
We think this balances healthy eating with reality.
So with these serving sizes in mind,
now let's see how much glutamine each food delivers
in a typical serving size.
This is fascinating, right?
Chicken, steak and fish
are clearly the best sources of glutamine
delivering around 2.5 grams of glutamine, each per serving.
Meanwhile, eggs and beans are not bad, either,
giving us around one gram of glutamine per serving.
The dairy products in milk and cheese
are a bit further behind
both offering around half a gram of glutamine, roughly.
Lastly, the other plant-based foods
that Dr Huberman said were good sources of glutamine,
well, we can see they're offering
just a fraction of the glutamine
you'll find in the animal-based sources,
meaning they are not great sources of glutamine.
Fr example, you'll find roughly 4700% more glutamine
in a fillet of chicken
than would find in half a cup of cooked cabbage.
Now you can see which types of foods
contain high amounts of glutamine,
as well as which ones
don't offer much glutamine by comparison.
So now I bet you're wondering
how can you eat more glutamine-rich foods?
Well, the first thing you should do
is download our free top 50 glutamine foods list.
This will show you the highest glutamine foods you can eat
including how much glutamine you'll get per serving.
Link to this in the description below.
Next, you should watch another video we made.
In it, we show you how to build a day
of glutamine-rich meals
from breakfast to dinner.
Very cool.
And finally, you should check out one more video
we recorded recently.
It goes through how much glutamine to take per day.
This will be really helpful for you
since it will help you set the right glutamine target
to match your health goals.
And of course,
the link to that is also in the description below
just before we finish the video,
myself and the research team at Essential Stacks
wanted to mention that better glutamine data has emerged
since the 2000 paper we mentioned earlier,
but the problem is that it is very limited.
And if you wanna geek out with us,
I'll quickly explain what has happened.
So basically in 2009,
the study appeared
in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
These researchers used gene sequencing
to determine the precise glutamine content of six foods.
See what I mean?
It was very limited.
And so while the 2000 study
declared four to 8% of protein content
in food as glutamine,
these researchers found the range maybe somewhat wider
and differs across the food groups.
Here are the results of the six key foods they measured.
And to make this more useful for you,
we crunched the numbers and built them out
for the six foods using our table structure
which we can see on the screen now.
So a few interesting takeaways
we found from this 2009 study.
Firstly, although the precise glutamine content
of beef and eggs were lower
than the 6% average figure we used in our earlier analysis,
the overall picture
that beef and to a lesser extent eggs,
are high glutamine foods, remains clear.
Secondly, for milk though, it was interesting to see
the precise glutamine content being higher
coming in at 8.1%.
This bumps the actual glutamine content up a bit,
making milk slightly more respectful
in terms of being a glutamine-rich food.
Thirdly, for the three plant-based foods
in rice, corn, and tofu,
well, the results were fascinating.
They were much higher in glutamine
as a percentage of protein
than the four to 8% range.
For example, a whopping 16.2%
of every gram of protein in corn
is in the form of glutamine.
Of course, these plant-based foods
don't have as much total protein as the animal-based foods,
especially beef.
So when you crunch the numbers,
you can see the glutamine per 100 grams
is still much less than beef.
So if we look at the numbers
of glutamine per serving, though,
we can see that rice and tofu
are pretty decent sources of glutamine
while corn is a moderate source.
So the two big takeaways here,
one, high protein animal-based foods
remain the best source of glutamine
and sit in the four to 8% glutamine range
in line with the earlier study.
And two, some plant-based foods
may also offer respectable amounts of glutamine
as many sit above the four to 8% range.
With all that said,
the reality is that most people looking to
increase their glutamine intake
are doing so to support their gut health.
And if you are one of them,
then you probably know all too well
that certain plant-based foods like legumes, tofu, and corn
may not be easy to tolerate
especially at these serving sizes.
And finally, if eating more glutamine-rich foods
like meat and seafood sounds like a chore
or something that might quickly get expensive,
then there is a much easier way to get extra glutamine.
And that is by taking a glutamine powder.
We of course make this, Gut L Glutamine.
It is made right here in the USA,
contains no animal products
and is third-party tested.
Best of all,
it is a much more affordable source of glutamine than food.
For example, while filet of steak and salmon
may deliver five grams of glutamine together,
they will also cost around $15 to $20.
By contrast, one scoop of Gut L Glutamine,
which also delivers five grams of glutamine
costs only 50 cents.
And so if you're interested in trying it,
you'll find a link to it in the description below.
Now we wanna hear from you.
What is your favorite glutamine food?
Let everyone know by leaving a comment below.
If you enjoy this video,
as part of our Glutamine Series,
then hit the like and subscribe button
to make sure you never miss another video.
Our team of dietitians and doctors
here at Essential Stacks
are so excited to continue researching
which foods and supplements help your gut health.
That way, you can save hundreds of hours of trial and error
and focus on what's best for your digestive health.
Thanks for watching
and see you in the comments.
Bye, for now.
(upbeat music)