Welcome to another episode of Ask a Nutritionist, part of our weekly Dishing Up Nutrition series, where we take a deeper dive into a topic asked by our listeners.

My name is Leah Kleintraud. I'm one of the registered dietitians

here at nutritional weight and wellness. And today I'm going to be tackling one big area of

interest that I get questions about fairly regularly, and that is collagen. You've probably

seen collagen advertised in all sorts of different products, and that might be topical beauty creams or gels, or maybe you've seen supplemental forms like powders and gummies.

And they all promise things like youthful skin, flexible, pain-free joints, and more.

So this episode, we're going to talk about what exactly is collagen

and asking the ultimate question, is it worth the investment?

So let's unpack the science behind collagen, what it does, how it works,

and if you do want to include it as part of your health regimen, how do we choose a good collagen that's the right fit for you?

And I do just want to clarify this conversation in particular, we're going to focus on collagen that we take in orally.

So collagen that we get from our food and our supplements, so the collagen that we ingest.

We're not going to talk about the collagen or specific collagen that you use topically in beauty products.

The great thing about this is Aaron Holt, who's another functional nutrition practitioner,

says skin is an inside job, and I love that saying.

So that means that the things that we eat and drink have a profound impact on the appearance and the integrity of our skin. So

when we talk about collagen that we eat or ingest, we are actually getting that two for one

with the skin. So let's start with the basics. Like what is

collagen and why do people use it? Collagen first and foremost is a protein. It is the most abundant

protein in the human body. So you can imagine it's got some importance. I like to think of it as scaffolding.

So think about scaffolding of a building that holds everything together. It gives structure to our skin,

our bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and even our gut lining.

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