Our body requires 20 amino acids (the building blocks of protein), 9 of which it can’t synthesize (thus called: “essential”) and absolutely must get from food. Normally, we get these amino acids from protein in our diet, and we can also supplement them by taking amino acid supplements if we wish.

Specifically, we require (per kg of bodyweight) a daily average of:

1. Histidine: 10 mg
2. Isoleucine: 20 mg
3. Leucine: 39 mg
4. Lysine: 30 mg
5. Methionine: 10.4 mg
6. Phenylalanine*: 25 mg
7. Threonine: 15 mg
8. Tryptophan: 4 mg
9. Valine: 26 mg

*combined with the non-essential amino acid tyrosine

Source: Protein and Amino Acid Requirements In Human Nutrition: WHO Technical Report

Why this matters

A lot of attention is given to protein, and making sure we get enough of it, especially as we get older, because the risk of sarcopenia (muscle mass loss) increases with age:

Protein vs Sarcopenia

However, not every protein comes with a complete set of essential amino acids, and/or have only trace amounts of of some amino acids, meaning that a dietary deficiency can arrive if one’s diet is too restrictive.

And, if we become deficient in even just one amino acid, then bad things start to happen quite soon. We only have so much space, so we’re going to oversimplify here, but:

1. Histidine: is needed to produce histamine (vital for immune responses, amongst other things), and is also important for maintaining the myelin sheaths on nerve cells.
2. Isoleucine: is very involved in muscle metabolism and makes up the bulk of muscle tissue.
3. Leucine: is critical for muscle synthesis and repair, as well as wound healing in general, and blood sugar regulation.
4. Lysine: is also critical in muscle synthesis, as well as calcium absorption and hormone production, as well as making collagen.
5. Methionine: is very important for energy metabolism, zinc absorption, and detoxification.
6. Phenylalanine: is a necessary building block of a lot of neurotransmitters, as well as being a building block of some amino acids not listed here (i.e., the ones your body synthesizes, but can’t without phenylalanine).
7. Threonine: is mostly about collagen and elastin production, and is also very important for your joints, as well as fat metabolism.
8. Tryptophan: is the body’s primary precursor to serotonin, so good luck making the latter without the former.
9. Valine: is mostly about muscle growth and regeneration.

So there you see, the ill effects of deficiency can range from “muscle atrophy” to “brain stops working” and “bones fall apart” and more. In short, any essential amino acid deficiency not remedied will ultimately result in death; we literally become non-viable as organisms without these 9 things.

What to do about it (the “life hack” part)

Firstly, if you eat a lot of animal products, those are “complete” proteins, meaning that they contain all 9 essential amino acids in sensible quantities. The reason that all animal products have these, is because they are just as essential for the other animals as they are for us, so they, just like us, must consume (and thus contain) them.

However, a lot of animal products come with other health risks:

Do We Need Animal Products To Be Healthy? ← this covers which animal products are definitely very health-risky, and which are probably fine according to current best science

…so many people may prefer to get more (or possibly all) dietary protein from plants.

However, plants, unlike us, do not need to consume all 9 essential amino acids, and this may or may not contain them all.

Soy is famously a “complete” protein insofar as it has all the amino acids we need.

But what if you’re allergic to soy?

Good news! Peas are also a “complete” protein and will do the job just fine. They’re also usually cheaper.

Final note

An oft-forgotten thing is that some other amino acids are “conditionally essential”, meaning that while we can technically synthesize them, sometimes we can’t synthesize enough and must get them from our diet.

The conditions that trigger this “conditionally essential” status are usually such things as fighting a serious illness, recovering from a serious injury, or pregnancy—basically, things where your body has to work at 110% efficiency if it wants to get through it in one piece, and that extra 10% has to come from somewhere outside the body.

Examples of commonly conditionally essential amino acids are arginine and glycine.

Arginine is critical for a lot of cell-signalling processes as well as mitochondrial function, as well as being a precursor to other amino acids, including creatine.

As for glycine?

Check out: The Sweet Truth About Glycine

Enjoy!

These nutrient-dense foods pack such a punch you only need a bit added to your meal…

• “Have 5 servings of fruit per day”—popular wisdom in the West
• “Have 7 servings of fruit per day!”—generally held as the norm in Japan
• “Have these 12 things that are mostly fruit & veg & nuts each day”—Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen
• “Does the pickle that comes with a burger count?”—an indication of how much many people struggle.

For what it’s worth: pickles are a good source of some minerals (and some healthy gut bacteria too), but are generally too high in sodium to be healthy for most people beyond in the most modest moderation.

But! It can be a lot easier, and without sitting down to a salad buffet every day!

Here are some sneaky tips:

(call it our nod to April Fool’s Day, because tricking yourself into eating more healthily is a top-tier prank)

Beyond soups and smoothies

Soups and smoothies are great, because we can take a lot of nutrients that way without actually oing much eating. And if we’ve a want or need to hide something, blending it does a fine job. However, we’re confident you already know how to make soups and smoothies. So…

Sauces are another excellent place to put nutrients—and as a bonus, homemade sauces will mean skipping on the store-bought sauces whose ingredients all-too-often look something like “sugar, water, spirit vinegar, glucose-fructose syrup, modified maize starch, maltodextrin, salt…”

Top things to use as a main base ingredient in sauces:

• Tomato purée—so much lycopene, and great vitamins too! Modest flavour, but obviously only sensible for what you intend to be a tomato-based sauce. Use it to make anything from marinara sauce to ketchup, sweet-and-sour to smoky barbecue.
• Lentils/beans—if unsure, red lentils or haricot beans have a very mild taste, and edamame beans are almost not-there, flavor-wise. But cooked and blended smooth, these are high-protein, iron-rich, flavonoid-heavy, and a good source of fiber too. Can be used as the base of so many savory creamy sauces!
• Corn—that yellow color? It’s all the lutein. Home-made creamed corn goes great as a dipping sauce! Added spices optional.

Vegetables that punch above their weight

Sometimes, you might not want to eat much veg, but a small edible side-dish could be appealing, or even a generous garnish. In those cases, if you choose wisely, you can have a lot of nutrients in a tiny portion. Here are some that have an absurd nutrient-to-size ratio:

Cacao nibs—one for the dessert-lovers here, but can also garnish a frothy coffee, your morning overnight oats, or if we’re honest, can also just be snacked on! And they keep for ages. Botanically technically a fruit, but we’re going to throw it in here. As for health qualities? Where to begin…

They:

• are full of antioxidants and fight inflammation
• boost immune health
• help control blood sugar levels
• improve vascular function and heart health
• and even fight cancer, which is a many-headed beast, but for example:
  • against bowel cancer
  • against prostate cancer
  • against breast cancer
  • against ovarian cancer
  • against lung cancer

…which is starting to look like a pattern, isn’t it? It’s good against cancer.

Brussels sprouts—if your knee-jerk reaction here wasn’t one of great appeal, then consider: these are delicious if done right.

Buy them fresh, not frozen (nothing nutritionally wrong with frozen if you like them—we’re just doing the extra-level tastiness here). Wash them and peel them, then cut twice from the top to almost-the-bottom, to quarter them in a way that they still stay in one piece. Rub them (or if you’re going easier on the fats, spray them) with a little olive oil, a tiny touch of lemon juice, and sprinkle a little cracked black pepper. Sautée them. We know people will advise roasting, which is also great, but try the sautée approach, and thank us later.

Four sprouts is already a sufficient daily serving of cruciferous vegetables, and provides so many health benefits, with not just a stack of vitamins and minerals, but also have anti-cancer properties, are great for your heart in multiple ways, and reduce inflammation too. They’re literally one of the healthiest foods out there and you only need a tiny portion to benefit.

Kale—Don’t like the taste/texture? That’s OK, read on… No surprises here, but it’s crammed with vitamins and minerals.

• If you don’t care for the bitter taste, cooking it (such as by steaming it) takes that away.
• If you don’t care for the texture, baking it with a little sprayed-on olive oil changes that completely (and is how “kale chips” are made).
• If you don’t care for either? Do the “kale chips” thing mentioned above, but do it on a lower heat for longer—dry it out, basically. Then either blend it in a food processor, or by hand with a pestle and mortar (it turns to powder very easily, so this won’t be hard work), and you now have a very nutrient-dense powder that tastes of very little. While fries are not a health food, an example here is that you can literally dust fries with it and they won’t taste any different but you got a bunch of vitamins and minerals added from a whole food source.
  • If going for the above approach, do it in batch and make yourself a jar of it to keep handy with your seasonings collection!

Bell peppers—Working hard to justify their high prices in the grocery store, these are very high in vitamins, especially rich in carotenoids, including lutein, and as a bonus, they’re also full of antioxidants. So, slice some and throw them at whatever else you’re cooking, and you’ve added a lot of nutrients for negligible effort.

Garlic—once you’ve done the paperwork, garlic not only makes bland meals delicious, but is also a treasure trove of micronutrients. It has a stack of vitamins and minerals, and also contains allicin. If you’ve not heard of that one, it’s the compound in garlic that is so good for blood pressure and heart health. See for example:

• Lipid-lowering effects of time-released garlic
• Garlic extract lowers blood pressure in patients with hypertension
• Garlic extract reduces blood pressure in hypertensives

If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a bulb of garlic can do (come on, we can’t be the only ones who measure garlic by the bulb instead of by the clove, right?)!

But in seriousness: measure garlic with your heart—have lots or a little, per your preference. The whole point here is that even a little of these superfoods can make a huge difference to your health!