Proteins are made up of long chains of amino acids. There are 20 amino acids that combine in different ways to make proteins in your body. Eleven of these amino acids the body can make. The other nine are called essential amino acids because the body cannot make them, and they must come from our diets.  Foods that contain all twenty essential amino acids are called complete proteins. These foods include beef, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, soy, quinoa and buckwheat. 

Foods that contain some, but not all the essential amino acids are called incomplete proteins. These foods include nuts, seeds, beans and some grains. If you follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, you need to include several types of incomplete proteins in order to ensure you’re consuming all nine essential amino acids. 

Collagen on its own is not a complete protein as it is missing one amino acid – Tryptophan.  Tryptophan is one of the nine essential amino acids the body cannot make so it must come from your diet.  Food sources of tryptophan include yoghurt, oats, seeds such as hemp, pumpkin and sunflower, almonds and dairy milk.  If you eat some of the above food sources with collagen it can become a complete protein.  

If you want to use Collagen powder as an equivalent protein powder, you need to work out the dosage from the label and possibly double or triple it and then take it with tryptophan foods.  So, if your collagen powder is 9g protein with 8g of collagen per 10g serve you would need to triple it (and take tryptophan foods) to get 27g protein in a 30 gram serve.