Do You Need to Eat Essential Amino Acids Every Day?

You need essential amino acids in your daily diet because your body cannot make them. If you do not get essential amino acids in your diet, proteins break down, resulting in muscle loss and problems with repair. Amino acids, which are building blocks of proteins, can be essential, non-essential or conditional. Non-essential and conditional amino acids are made in your system, so you do not need to worry about consuming them each day. Knowing which foods provide all or some of the essential amino acids helps you make sure you body gets adequate amounts.

Types of Amino Acids

Your body needs more than 20 total amino acids to build and repair muscles and tissues. The nine essential amino acids are histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lycine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan and valine. Non-essential amino acids, made in your system, include alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid. In addition, your body makes conditional amino acids -- however, if you are stressed or severely sick, you need to get them from your diet as well. Conditional amino acids include arginine, cysteine, glutamine, glycine, ornithine, proline, serine and tyrosine.

Complete Proteins

Meat, dairy, eggs, poultry and seafood provide all nine essential amino acids and are known as complete proteins. Even though these foods are rich in protein, selecting lean varieties, such as fish, seafood and skinless poultry, limits your fat intake. For example, a 6-ounce porterhouse steak has about 40 grams of protein. The downside is that the steak also has nearly 40 grams of fat and around 15 grams of saturated fat. Opt instead for salmon, which has approximately 35 grams of protein, to cut your fat intake in half and reduce saturated fat by two-thirds.

Incomplete Proteins

Plant-based foods are called incomplete proteins, since they only provide some of the essential amino acids. Beans, brown rice, tofu, lentils and nuts are lacking in one or more type. If you are a vegetarian or do not eat meat everyday, it is important to eat several types of plant proteins daily. You do not have to consume these foods in one sitting. Having nuts as a mid-morning snack, lentils sprinkled on your lunch salad and grilled tofu for dinner ensures you get adequate amounts of the essential amino acids.

Daily Intake

Getting all of the essential amino acids you need in your daily diet requires you to meet your daily protein recommendation. Between 10 percent and 35 percent of your calories should come from protein, which has 4 calories per gram, reports the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010. As an example, if you follow a 2,000-calorie diet, you need 50 to 175 grams of protein each day.

Other Considerations

If you do not eat seafood or animal-based foods, your diet may be lacking in essential amino acids. Following a plant-based diet may provide all of the essential amino acids if you consume a variety of plant proteins each day. However, if you are a finicky eater or follow a limited diet due to a food allergy, your diet may be lacking. In these cases, taking an over-the-counter amino acid supplement can help you get the essential amino acids you are missing. Read the label on your supplement to ensure it provides the nine essential amino acids and inform your physician before beginning a new supplementation program.