We tend to favour lean muscle meats over high in gelatin animal parts like skin, tendons, and other gelatinous cuts. More traditional diets are much higher in gelatin. Let’s look at the benefits of gelatin and ways we can incorporate more of it in our diets. 
 
Why to include gelatin?

Beautiful skin. 
Gelatine provides non-essential amino acid glycine. It means our body can make glycine but the problem is we don’t make enough to meet our needs. Glycine is the primary amino acid in collagen, one of the primary structural element of skin. It makes our skin healthy and beautiful, providing elasticity and preventing excessive wrinkling.
 
Healthy joints
Gelatin improves joint health and reduces inflammation. Athletes, who supplement collagen, experience less pain in their joints, which can significantly improve performance. It also supports healing and speeds up recovery from injuries. People suffering from inflammatory joint or bone diseases like arthritis or osteoporosis, can also benefit from collagen consumption to manage inflammation and pain.
 
Meat consumption balance.
Muscle meats are high in amino acid methionine, that rises homocysteine levels. High homocysteine is a significant risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and other serious diseases. You need adequate glycine intake to balance out the potentially negative effects of high animal protein consumption. This may be why some studies show correlation between high meat intakes and various disease states.   
 
Improved sleep quality.
Glycine consumed before bed (in the amount of 3g) has been shown to help with sleep and with no side effects. It is also an inhibitory neurotransmitter, which can decrease anxiety and help you to stay calm.
 
Gut health.
Gelatin improves gut integrity and digestion by supporting healthy mucosal lining and stimulating stomach secretions. Both, poor digestion and impaired gut integrity, are very common in our society. Gelatin also promotes healthy bowel movements.
 
Protein sparing.
Gelatin intake reduces muscle meat needs to maintain muscle mass meaning that you can put on and maintain muscles without high animal protein consumption.
 
Reduces wasting of animal parts.
Gelatin uses parts of the animal that might not be used otherwise, making it more environmentally-friendly. This is more traditional way of meat consumption with minimal wasting.
 
Enhances taste.
Used in soups and sauces significantly enhances your cooking. It gives better richer flavour with additional health benefits.
 

How to incorporate more gelatin into your diet?

1. Eat gelatinous parts like skin, necks, and tendons. You can use slow cooker so they become really tender.
 
2. Drink bone broth or use it in cooking to make soups and sauces. It’s very beneficial to have small amounts (1/2 cup) each day.
 
3. Use high quality grass-fed gelatin powder like ‘Great Lakes’. Whole protein gelatin is great for digestive health. It must be mixed into warm fluids and can be used to make jello.

4. Hydrolyzed form can be used as protein powder added to smoothies, any type of liquid including cold drinks and juices. It can improve skin, joint health and improve your sleep.

I don’t really focus on counting anything. I don’t count calories and I also don’t like calculating fat/carbs/protein ratios. The reason is that it can become complicated, tedious and can also take away at least some of the fun and pleasure from eating and naturally responding to our body needs. I prefer to compose my meals based on how I feel, planned activities and time I can spend in the kitchen on a given day more than pre-calculated ratios and fixed ideas. Having said that there are some basic rules and it’s good to keep them in mind.

Proteins are easy as we need just enough, not too much, not too little. We need protein for many of the functions in our body as well as for optimal muscle mass. They also help with blood sugar regulation and cravings. In practice, it means that we should ideally have some source of protein with each meal. It can be a small piece of meat or fish (a palm size) or vegetarian sources like a small handful of nuts and seeds for example. We are all different of course and if we struggle with keeping or putting some muscles on or other health challenges we should re-adjust. In general, the excessive consumption is not necessary and potentially even harmful.

When it comes to fat and carbs my first and I think the most important rule is their quality. This concerns of course protein as well. Before we start experimenting with any ideas, either high fat or low fat, we should make sure carbs come from optimal, wholefoods’ sources and we avoid any unnatural or damaged fats. This is more important for our health than coming up with a perfect carb to fat ratio. Once we clean up our diet, we can think about what optimal nutrition means for us. Basic understanding of our metabolism and what actually happens with the macronutrients in our body is important in my opinion. We want to get rid of any preconceptions or ideas promoted for such a long time. Low fat diet is one of them. As a first step I’d avoid any low fat products, which goes with my first rule about the quality. Low fat yoghurts, low fat cookies etc. are usually not wholefoods and often packed with extra sugar, sweeteners or other ‘strange’ and often unhealthy ingredients to make them edible. Fat makes foods taste good. If your remove fat you have to compensate. The idea that we do need healthy fat in our diet is often quite difficult to accept especially when someone comes for weigh loss. Why would I eat fat if I want to lose fat? This is when a little understanding about our physiology comes handy and we discover that excess carbs are actually stored as triglycerides (fat) in our bodies. It doesn’t mean that everyone should be on a low carb diet. Low carb diet can be not optimal for you, depending on your lifestyle, age, gender, activity levels etc. or even harmful in certain conditions. If we are in good general health, we can experiment and find out what makes us feel the best. We certainly should not be scared of good quality fats in our diet.

I recommend watching this short video by Dr Mark Hyman, the medical director at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine. It’s aimed at fatty liver disease but explains the role and destiny of different macronutrients nicely.