5 Foods to Eat to Increase Protein

There are a lot of foods that are rich in proteins, but these protein-rich foods about to be mentioned are essential in increasing the amount of protein in your body. They are all nutritious and good for you, so there is no reason why not to eat them.

Beef and Pork:
One of the best foods to eat when you need protein would have to be lean red meat like beef and pork. A portion of beef and pork would be characterized as having one ounce of each in it according to the American Diabetes Association. There are about 7 grams of protein in each portion and serving of beef and pork. Therefore, this is a great way of getting protein into your body. You can definitely have more than one portion of meat, so there is an opportunity to gain a lot of protein with each meal that beef and pork are in that you digest.

Chicken and Turkey:
Chicken and turkey are both great alternatives for beef and pork. Even though they are not red meat, the nutritious content and amount of protein in each is a lot. Chicken breast, turkey cutlets, drumsticks, cornish hens, thigh, duck, and goose each contain 7 grams of protein per ounce as well. Although 7 grams is a lot of protein, there are ways to get rid of the excess fat in each kind of meat. One can get rid of excess fat by removing all skin and visible fats.

Milk and Dairy:
Milk can be a great source of protein from a variety of animals. Some of these animals include cow and goat. The portion for these kinds of milk, rice, and soy is 8 fl. oz. Other ways of getting protein are cheese, yogurt, and cottage cheese. Every ounce of any of these three would provide a person with 7 grams of protein. Additionally, eating one whole egg or eating 2 egg whites provide a person with 7 grams of protein per egg, which is the same as most meats.

Vegetarian Foods:
It can be difficult for vegetarians to get as much protein as they should into their body because there are less options available to them, but it is still possible. There are still a myriad of options a vegetarian has in order to get protein into their body. Soy is a great protein source for vegetarians, as is tofu. Four ounces of soy gives off the same amount of protein as one ounce of chicken (seven ounces). Most packages of vegetarian foods actually have about 14 ounces of protein in them.

Nuts and Seeds:
There are a lot of snacks which can be alternatives to protein bars. These alternatives are in the form of nuts and seeds. Each ounce of nuts provides 7 grams of protein as well. Instead of having chicken, nuts can be taken to get these necessary grams of protein. Even great-tasting seeds, like sunflower seeds, have 7 grams of protein in them for one tablespoon serving. Thus, you can eat healthy and maintain high protein levels while still eating food you enjoy.

Protein Stability and Protein Folding

Protein stability is the net balance of forces which allow someone to tell whether or not the protein will be denatured. This is also referred to as thermodynamic stability. The net stability can be defined as the difference in free energy between the native and denatured state. These two values can be called Gn and Gu.

In the previous blog post, free energy was introduced as related to free energy. The Gibbs Free Energy value can be calculated using a variety of equations. In fact, there are four ways to calculate this value. The four ways include delta G = delta H - T (delta S), the difference between the free energies of products and reactants, Hess's Law, and delta G = delta Go + RTlnQ.

Decreasing the energy of the folded state or increasing the energy of the unfolded state have the same effect on delta G. The equation normally used to calculate the free energy can be taken from delta G = Gn - Gu = -RTlnK. In this case, the K would be equal to the fraction folded divided by the fraction unfolded. The reason why this practice has so much significance is because of the multitude of drugs that can be made if different proteins were seen as more stable. Various new formulas for different protein combinations can be made, which may be able to make them safer to sell in pharmacies.

We will take this formula and put it into good use through practice! We can measure the difference in free energy in the unfolded and folded states. The average stability of a monomeric small protein is about 5-10 kcal/mol. Therefore, when plugged into the equation, an aqueous solution at room temperature would have a ratio of 20000000:1 in terms of folded to unfolded. This value of K can also be looked at as the ratio of the forward and reverse rate constants. When delta G is graphed against Denaturant or Urea, the graph typically comes out to be downward sloping, signalling a drop in the amount of free energy changed.

The Van't Hoff Equation can also be written as dlnK/d(1/T) = -H/R. Thus, when Van'T Hoff plots (lnK vs. 1/T) are made, the thermal denaturation of proteins are non-linear, indicating that H varies with temperature. This implies that the heat capacity for the folded and unfolded proteins are different.

Free Energy of Protein Folding

There are a lot of benefits of understanding the free energy in protein folding. First, many proteins are used in industrialized products, including in a lot of what one puts into the body. These proteins must be stable in order to be taken in by the body. If these proteins have a slight risk of being bad for people, then these proteins cannot be sold to consumers. Another reason protein sequencing would be beneficial is because researchers believe that proteins can be denatured and still work. Instead of maintaining their shape, the proteins can still do daily life functions. One last reason why protein sequencing is helpful is because it can limit the amount of procedures that need to be done to the proteins. Some of the superfluous procedures, including X-rays crystallography and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, will not need to be performed anymore if scientists had a better understanding of free energy.

Before we understand free energy in protein folding, we must understand free energy. Gibbs free energy, synonymous with free energy, is defined as the enthalpy of the system minus the product of the temperature times the entropy of the system. This is denoted by the equation G = H - TS. The free energy of the system is a state function because the thermodynamic functions inside of the equation, including H and S, are both state functions as well. If you want to know more, watch the video provided. It is a presentation by Paul Andersen explaining Gibbs free energy.

When proteins denature, then the primary functions of the proteins do not work. The willingness and ability for proteins to be flexible is calculated by measuring the free energy of various proteins. However, this free energy value might be more and more difficult to solve because there is a different energy landscape for each state of the protein, whether it is neutral, charged, folded, intermediate, or even unfolded. These various states allow there to be many mistakes that can occur when trying to calculate the free energy of a system. Therefore, if we understand the protein sequences better, the free energy might be easier to solve for. The state in which it is in might be able to help scientists predict what the value of the free energy is. Next post we will look into how to actually calculate this value and what state the protein must be in.