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Everything you need to know about chicken protein

Have you heard of chicken protein and would like to know more? Nutrimuscle provides you with many details about this product.

Nutrition santé

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Par Nutrimuscle Conseil September 21, 2023
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Have you heard of chicken protein and would like to know more? Nutrimuscle provides you with many details about this product.

Chicken protein: an effective novelty?

Sources of protein powder for athletes have been increasing for some time. Today, chicken protein is presented to us as the latest technological discovery!

What is it really ?

Chicken protein: quality above all?

As with beef protein, which we imagine comes from a good piece of meat (skeletal muscle), the advertisements suggest to us that chicken protein comes from the breast, or even the muscle of the thigh. What is it really?

If we look at the marketing arguments of the biggest producers of chicken protein powder, the claims are not at all the same as those of advertisements aimed at sportspeople. Indeed, chicken protein producers are looking to find opportunities with protein powder retailers. Thus, in the press kit of one of the world's largest suppliers of chicken protein, we learn that the ingredients that go into this protein are "low-cost" and therefore inexpensive (1).

Low cost raw materials

By low-cost, it means everything that butchers don't want.

The producers do not hide this low quality. Thus, this same producer describes to us, on his site, the origin of the raw materials (2): Chicken Protein Isolate Powder is produced from USDA chicken breast meat, chicken white meat, and/or the meat remaining on the chicken frames, after chicken breast and legs are removed.

Chicken Isolate Protein Powder is produced from USDA approved chicken wing meat, chicken breast and/or whatever remains on the carcass after removing the chicken breast and thighs.

Translation: we remove the noble parts and we use everything else. The only ones not to be informed are the athletes who are dangled with a miracle protein!

A protein rich in collagen

Always thanks to the sites of the producers, we learn that the protein of chicken contains approximately 16% of collagen. Thanks to certain isolates, we can go up to 45% collagen. This concentration does not make it a bad protein if you want to take care of your tendons and joints. But for this, it is preferable to choose a 100% collagen protein , with collagen coming directly from the cartilages and not from the viscera.

Indeed, the collagen of the viscera is less interesting for the maintenance of the joints, because the latter require very specific forms of collagen. And this "richness" in collagen does not make it an ideal protein for gaining "muscle" either!

A novelty ?

Chicken protein is presented as a novelty, because what is new and innovative is perceived positively.

But looking at what chicken protein producers are selling, we find that they are making new out of old. Indeed, they are the ones who, for decades, have been selling powdered soups made from dehydrated chicken. It is therefore likely that you have already had the chance to test this "new" protein in the form of chicken soup, or a chicken-flavoured appetizer... And since nothing is thrown away, they also sell the chicken fat in the form dehydrated!

The only thing new with chicken protein is the markets that producers are trying to expand into.

Provenance masking agents

Much like beef protein, the underlying arguments are that chicken protein is rich in BCAAs, glutamine, creatine...

If this protein was naturally rich in BCAAs, glutamine or creatine, we would not find these amino acids in the list of ingredients added to the protein itself . Their presence is only there to hide the harsh reality of the "low cost" origin of this protein.