What are essential and non-essential amino acids

The body can use them to synthesize its own protein only if the amount and type of absorbed amino acids can meet the human body's needs. Amino acids are divided into two categories in nutrition: essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids.

Essential amino acids refer to amino acids that the human body cannot synthesize by itself or the synthesis rate cannot meet the human body's needs and must be ingested from food. For adults, there are eight such amino acids, including lysine, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, threonine, valine, tryptophan and phenylalanine. Histidine is also an essential amino acid for infants.

Non-essential amino acids do not mean that the human body does not need these amino acids, but that the human body can synthesize it itself or convert it from other amino acids, and does not necessarily have to be directly ingested from food. These amino acids include glutamic acid, alanine, arginine, glycine, aspartic acid, cystine, proline, serine and tyrosine. If some non-essential amino acids such as cystine and tyrosine are supplied in sufficient quantities, the need for methionine and phenylalanine among the essential amino acids can be saved. Editor in charge: Sweet