HealthEsupplements Bodybuilding and Weight Loss Supplement Encyclopedia

Gelatin is obtained by boiling the skin, tendons, and ligaments of animals. As a result, it contains protein, collagen (a primary component of joints, cartilage, and nails), and various amino acids. It has long been a key ingredient for providing support for "jelled" desserts, salads, frozen drinks, and soft candies such as Gummi Bears. (In fact, the word gelatin is derived from the Latin "gelatus," meaning stiff or frozen.)

Scientists have been studying gelatin for centuries. It has no smell or taste of its own, adapting to whatever it is added to. During the Napoleonic Wars, the French, desperate for nutrition sources during the English blockade, reportedly first turned to gelatin as a source of protein (albeit a weak one). Gelatin began its long run as a popular consumable, however, in the 1890s, when it was first developed-and then heavily promoted-as a commercial product by Charles Knox, founder of the Knox Gelatin Corporation.

In addition to its famous "jiggly" food uses, gelatin with its flexible, dissolvable structure is also used to manufacture capsules (both hard and "soft-gel") to hold medications, vitamins, and other dietary supplements. It also has a range of industrial and medical engineering applications: Gelatin is an ingredient in film coatings, medical devices such as artificial heart valves, and in specialized meshes used to repair wounds, to name a few.

Several dietary supplements containing gelatin are marketed today.

Although gelatin has been touted for decades as a good source of protein and a great nail and hair strengthener, for the most part there is little hard scientific proof to support the vague health claims made for gelatin products.

For example, gelatin contains protein, but in an incomplete form that the body cannot readily use. This fact might be part of the reason that so many people died of malnutrition in the 1970s while on popular liquid diets; the gelatin in the product was supposed to have served as the main protein source. There was also a more recent weight-loss with gelatin craze that may have been spurred on by studies such as one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in the early 1900s. This reported that animals fed only gelatin rapidly lost weight and strength. (They also ultimately died of starvation.)

Gelatin contains a number of amino acids (histidine, lysine, leucine, tryptophan, valine, phenylalanine, methionine, threonine, and isoleucine); amino acids are in fact the building blocks of proteins.

Specifically, gelatin is most commonly considered to:

Possibly promote joint health. Two of the amino acids found in gelatin are substances the body uses to make collagen, a primary component of connective tissues such as cartilage. Based on these findings, researchers sponsored by a major gelatin manufacturer are currently exploring whether supplemental gelatin might play a role in rebuilding arthritic joints.

In 1998, a small Nabisco Company-sponsored study at Indiana's Ball State University found that gelatin supplements helped to keep the joints of athletes more flexible and could even help to lessen pain. Nabisco promotes this product under the name Knox NutraJoint. It and other widely advertised gelatin-based supplements also contain added ingredients that are known to be beneficial to joint health.