Essential amino acids: master regulators of nutrition and environmental footprint?

Abstract

The environmental footprint of animal food production is considered several-fold greater than that of crops cultivation. Therefore, the choice between animal and vegetarian diets may have a relevant environmental impact. In such comparisons however, an often neglected issue is the nutritional value of foods. Previous estimates of nutrients’ environmental footprint had predominantly been based on either food raw weight or caloric content, not in respect to human requirements. Essential amino acids (EAAs) are key parameters in food quality assessment. We re-evaluated here the environmental footprint (expressed both as land use for production and as Green House Gas Emission (GHGE), of some animal and vegetal foods, titrated to provide EAAs amounts in respect to human requirements. Production of high-quality animal proteins, in amounts sufficient to match the Recommended Daily Allowances of all the EAAs, would require a land use and a GHGE approximately equal, greater o smaller (by only ±1-fold), than that necessary to produce vegetal proteins, except for soybeans, that exhibited the smallest footprint. This new analysis downsizes the common concept of a large advantage, in respect to environmental footprint, of crops vs. animal foods production, when human requirements of EAAs are used for reference.

Amino acid concentration, total phenolic compound content and antioxidant activity of snap bean genotypes

“…In general, the concentrations of the amino acids in the genotypes did not differ significantly, except for glutamic acid and histidine (Table 1). High contents of aspartic acid and leucine were also observed in all the snap bean genotypes, agreeing with the data of Sgarbieri et al (1979) and of Tessari et al (2016), who found values that ranged from 13.8 to 14.5 g / 100 g for aspartic acid and from 8.85 to 9.94 g / 100 g for leucine, similar concentrations to those found in the present study. The UEL 415 genotype showed a higher glutamic acid concentration (12.9 g / 100 g) than the UEL 405 (10.9 g / 100 g) and UEL 1 (10.8 g / 100 g) genotypes, while the UEL 2 genotype had a higher concentration of histidine as compared to UEL 405 (2.13 and 1.67 g / 100 g, respectively).…”

“…Legumes, such as beans, soybeans, peas, lentils, peanuts and other pod plants have played an important role in the traditional diets of many countries, besides constituting an excellent source of protein (Sgarbieri et al, 1979;Messina, 1999). The nutritive value of snap bean proteins depends mainly on their free amino acid content, of which leucine and glutamic acid should be highlighted due to the high levels found in beans and other legumes (Sgarbieri et al, 1979;Gonzalez-Castro et al, 1997;Tessari et al, 2016).…”

Energy and protein feed-to-food conversion efficiencies in the US and potential food security gains from dietary changes

“…While calories are widely used to quantify food system performance, protein-which is often invoked as the key nutritional asset of meat-offers an important complementary dimension (Tessari et al 2016). The flow of protein in the American livestock production system, which supplies ≈45 g protein person −1 d −1 to the MAD, is shown in figure 2.…”

“…Substitution of other food items with other nutritionally similar animal food items is also plausible (e.g., pork for beef), yet the food gains expected from such replacements are considerably lower (see supplementary data). Substitution of beef with non-meat animal based products (dairy and eggs) is possible on a caloric or protein basis (see supplementary data), yet given their dissimilar nutritional profile, a more elaborate methodology is required to construct and analyze such a shift (Tessari et al 2016). The dietary shift potential of replacing beef with a plant based alternative (dominated by legumes) (Eshel et al 2016) amounts to ≈190 million additional people.…”

Spatial Characterization of Soybean Yield and Quality (Amino Acids, Oil, and Protein) for United States

“…Soybean serves as an oil seed crop, feed for animals, protein source for human, and biofuel feedstock 4 . Production of high protein requires less land and exhibits a smaller carbon footprint than producing the same protein from animal or plant sources 5 . Maintaining soybean economic advantage will require study of the seed quality factors and their degree of linkage with genetics, environment, and management (G × E × M).…”