aminodata.org

An open reference · draft for review

Stop tracking protein.
Start tracking amino acids.

Every gram of protein you eat is built from 20 amino acids, and different foods carry very different mixes of them. Amino Atlas maps the full profile of 4,000+ foods against your daily needs, so you can see what you are actually getting.

What protein do you eat in a day?

Type each source and how much of it. Meals, snacks, shakes, everything. We add up the amino acids across your whole day and show you the shape of it.

g

Searches all foods in the atlas. Portion prefills to a typical serving; change it to what you actually eat. Want to browse individual profiles instead? Open the amino acid database.

Amino acid database

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How to read this atlas

Built on the idea that the conversation needs to move past "grams of protein", towards which amino acids you're actually getting, and whether any one of them is quietly short.

Where the numbers come from

Whole-food profiles are drawn from USDA FoodData Central (SR Legacy analytical data). The featured set is hand-curated, and behind search sits the full SR Legacy import: every USDA food with a complete 18-amino-acid profile (4,000+; labs report 18 because the analysis merges glutamine into glutamic acid and asparagine into aspartic acid, so all 20 are accounted for), filtered through basic quality checks. Supplement powders use typical published compositional analyses (e.g. Gorissen et al. 2018) rather than one brand's label. Each entry lists its source.

Same food, different sample

The same source varies: grass-fed vs corn-fed beef, cultivar, season, processing. Values here are typical, and the faint band at each ray tip marks a ±10% indicative variation, except where a true published range exists. Beef carries one now: the published grass-fed vs conventional comparisons find feeding system barely shifts beef's amino acid profile (the differences live in fat and micronutrients), so its measured range is a narrow ~4-8%. Building real ranges like this for every food is the roadmap.

Requirements, not just RDA

Coverage is scored against the WHO/FAO/UNU (2007) adult indispensable amino acid pattern, expressed per gram of protein, plus per-kilogram daily requirements in the calculator. For total protein we show two numbers: the RDA (0.8 g/kg/day) as a survival floor (enough to prevent deficiency) and a thrive target entered as a simple total, defaulting to 1.6 g/kg of body weight (about 120 g for a 75 kg adult), in line with the intakes meta-analyses associate with supporting muscle. Type your own total in the calculator if you work to a different number.

What "limiting" means

A protein's amino acid score is set by its scarcest essential amino acid relative to the WHO pattern. Below 100%, that amino acid caps how well the protein alone can support tissue needs, which is exactly why complementary sources matter.