White Rabbit
Posts
The missing 30% of your protein

The missing 30% of your protein

Progress is a medal with two sides

Kos Zharoid
April 06, 2025

Your great-grandmother had it right.

She made broth, cooked marrow, and used organ meats with pride. Turns out, she wasn’t just stretching meals - she was feeding her family nutrient-dense powerhouses. Science is finally catching up to what she knew all along.

In partnership with

Start taking insurance with ease

As a provider, your expertise changes lives – and taking insurance makes care accessible to those who need it most. Headway makes it seamless. Start accepting insurance with ease so you can focus on what you do best – providing quality care.

Join 50,000+ providers building their best practices and expanding their reach with Headway.

Simplify insurance with streamlined billing, credentialing, and compliance
Earn more with higher rates, bi-weekly payments, and expert guidance
Access free continuing education to deepen your skillset and keep up your licensure
Manage a connected practice with EHR tools for scheduling, messaging, and documentation

The best part? It’s all in one free, no-commitment platform. With Headway, taking insurance is easier than you think.

Join our network for free

Many people today focus on eating lean protein like chicken breasts, steaks, and protein shakes. But what if we're missing something important from our ancestors' diet? What if the animal parts we throw away hold secrets to better health?

The missing pieces are collagen and gelatin.

Most modern diets include a lot of muscle meat (steaks, chicken breasts, ground turkey) but little else from animals. This is very different from how people ate throughout history when they used the whole animal.

Collagen and gelatin are what we're missing. These proteins come from animal connective tissues and contain unique amino acids like glycine, glutamic acid, proline, and alanine that fight inflammation.

Collagen makes up about 30% of the protein in your body! It's in your skin, joints, bones, and teeth. Studies show collagen-rich foods improve skin elasticity, joint function, gut health, and bone strength.

Why does amino acid balance matter?

The importance of collagen goes beyond its direct benefits. It also helps balance our overall amino acid intake.

Modern diets heavy in muscle meats provide high levels of amino acids like cysteine, methionine, and tryptophan. While these are essential, eating too much without enough glycine (from collagen) can increase inflammation and harm thyroid function.

Our ancestors ate animals completely - not just muscle meat but also organs, bones, skin, and connective tissues. This naturally gave them a balanced amino acid profile.

Some research shows that limiting methionine (found in muscle meat) can increase lifespan. But we don't need to stop eating muscle meat altogether. Instead, we should balance it with glycine-rich collagen sources - exactly what our ancestors did through nose-to-tail eating!

Studies show that when we balance methionine from muscle meat with glycine from collagen, we get health benefits similar to those from restricting methionine. This means we can enjoy the nutrients from muscle meat while avoiding potential downsides.

How we lost our way.

Our shift toward eating mostly muscle meats began in the mid-20th century due to:

Industrialization of meat production: We moved from small, local butchers who used the whole animal to large meat factories that separated premium cuts from "less desirable" parts. The personal relationship between butchers and customers and knowledge about using various cuts disappeared.
Fat phobia: Starting in the 1950s, nutrition advice wrongly demonized animal fat. This pushed people toward lean cuts and away from collagen-rich parts that contained more fat.
Convenience culture: After World War II, busy households wanted quick meals. Families embraced fast-cooking muscle meats, rejecting collagen-rich cuts that required slow cooking as impractical.
Loss of traditional food knowledge: As home cooking declined, fewer people learned how to prepare collagen-rich cuts and organ meats from their elders.

All-American Meat & Seafood, Delivered

Enjoy high-quality meat and seafood delivered straight to your door with Good Chop. Sourced from American farms and fisheries, every order supports local family farms and independent ranchers across the U.S. Fully customize your box from over 100 cuts, including 100% grass-fed beef, USDA Prime steaks, wild-caught seafood, organic chicken, and so much more! Each product is vacuum-sealed and flash-frozen at peak freshness, so you can stock your freezer and cook on your schedule - convenience at its best! Skip the hassle of searching for quality cuts at reasonable prices. Good Chop’s plans start at just $3.32 per portion and are backed by a 100% satisfaction money-back guarantee - love it or get your money back! Exclusive for White Rabbit Readers: Get free ground beef with every order for the life of membership! Click the link below to claim your offer.

How to eat more like our ancestors.

Try these simple steps:

Make bone broth from bones and connective tissues, or buy quality pre-made bone broth.
Try slow-cooked cuts like beef shanks, chuck roasts, and chicken wings, which are high in connective tissue.
Include some organ meats in your diet - even just twice a month or more.
Buy whole animals when possible rather than just select cuts.
Support local farmers who often struggle to sell less popular cuts.

Benefits of nose-to-tail eating.

Beyond health, eating more varied animal parts makes environmental and economic sense. Consider this: a single cow only provides 8-10 pounds of tenderloin. If someone ate tenderloin daily, they'd need 35 cows per year!

Using more parts of each animal creates less waste and shows respect for the animals that feed us. Many traditional cuisines still embrace this approach:

Italian osso buco (braised veal shanks)
Korean seolleongtang (ox bone soup)
Mexican menudo (tripe stew)
French pâtés made from organ meats
Traditional Chinese dishes use chicken feet and pork ears

Finding balance.

You don't need to give up muscle meats - just balance them with collagen-rich cuts and organ meats. This provides more complete nutrition and reflects how humans evolved to eat.

This approach reduces waste, honors the animals that provide our food, and reconnects us with traditional wisdom. Bringing these forgotten foods back to our tables nourishes our bodies. It strengthens our connection to food traditions that sustained generations before us.

Next time you buy meat, consider going beyond steaks and chicken breasts. Your body, local farmers, and generations of ancestors might thank you for remembering this forgotten wisdom!

Your Personalized Blueprint for Health

What if a single test could unlock everything you need to know about your health? With TruAge + TruHealth, it can. From identifying your biological age to tracking key markers like inflammation, vitamins, and metabolic health, their reports are fully customized to you. You’ll receive actionable steps based on your results, giving you the clarity and confidence to make impactful changes. One finger prick of blood, one life-changing report. White Rabbit readers can save 20% today with code WELLNESS20