Hello,

I maintain the Canadian food composition database and I have had an interesting question posed to me that I do not know how to answer.  

The question comes from our research scientists here at Health Canada concerning a couple of non-essential amino acids that are nonetheless important in protein building.  

Evidently, glutamine is the most abundant free amino acid in the body.  According to several sources on the web it is present in both plant and animal proteins.  However, the only nutrient code I know about that is close, is Glutamic acid.  Does that value include glutamine?  Similarily does the aspartic acid value include asparagine?

These researchers are trying to determine maximum normal intakes of total amino acids in order to set regulations on how much can be added to foods.  If the glutamic acid and aspartic acid values do not include these sources of amino acids, we don't really know what the total intake amounts to.  



Thanks,



Josephine Deeks, MSc.
Nutrition Research Division
Health Canada
Ottawa, ON
[log in to unmask]
Telephone |  613-957-0926/   Facsimile |  613-946-6212
Government of Canada



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