THE WH Nutrition Dictionary

amino acids

(uh.meenoh asuhds)

Even if you were concentrating in biology class, you’d be hard-pressed to remember the details. Well, we suspect your lessons involved amino acids – the building blocks your body uses to store protein, which in turn builds your major muscles, organs and immune system. Think of them as Lego bricks, glued together by cells and built from the animal and plant proteins you eat. Chemists Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet discovered the first amino acid way back in 1806. By 1935, scientists knew of about 20 of the 22 of them, including 10 that your body produces naturally and nine more that are essential for it to function properly. Fascinating stuff.

KNOW THIS: Those nine are ‘essential’ because, without them, your body’s proteins (aka muscle) would start degenerating. “You can’t actually make these nine essential amino acids yourself, but they’re present in foods,” explains nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert. “The foods with all nine amino acids are called complete proteins and include meat, dairy, soybeans and eggs. Foods with some amino acids, but not all nine – such as beans, rice and peanut butter – are incomplete proteins.” Meaning a protein-packed