Lysine
Lysine is the essential amino acid grain protein is shortest of. Adults need about 30 mg per kilogram of body weight a day, and beans, meat, fish and dairy are the easy sources.
30 mg per kg of body weight a day
2.1 g a day for a 70 kg adult
Upper limit · none set, for lack of studies
- Most per 100 g 3.4g Bacon
- In protein 45mg/g of protein, the WHO pattern
- Main sources Meat, fish and dairy and beans, lentils and soy
- Low in Grains wheat, corn and rice protein
Daily requirement: WHO, FAO and UNU 2007. Food figures per 100 g from USDA FoodData Central, only for foods with a Caltide calorie page.
Foods High in Lysine
Ranked per 100 g, with what a usual portion gives, limited to 3 foods per category. Foods with a Caltide calorie page link to it.
B
Bacon
Nutrition facts
3.4g / 100 g
C
Cube steak
0.9 g in 1 piece/slice
3g / 100 g
B
Beef roast
1.7 g in 1 regular/thin slice
2.8g / 100 g
R
Rotisserie chicken breast
1.7 g in 1 medium slice
2.8g / 100 g
B
Beef sirloin steak
0.84 g in 1 piece/slice
2.8g / 100 g
G
Gruyère
2.7g / 100 g
G
Gouda
2.7g / 100 g
P
Port du Salut cheese
2.5g / 100 g
R
Rotisserie chicken drumstick
1.3 g in 1 drumstick
2.5g / 100 g
R
Rotisserie chicken
1.5 g in 1 slice
2.5g / 100 g
T
Turkey mince
1.4 g in 1 patty
2.4g / 100 g
T
Trout
2.1 g in 1 small/regular fillet
2.4g / 100 g
What Is Lysine?
Lysine is one of the nine essential amino acids, so the body has to get it from protein in food or from supplements. It cannot make lysine from anything else, and it has no store of it beyond the protein in its own tissues.
What Lysine Does in the Body
Besides being built into every protein, lysine has a few jobs of its own. In collagen, some lysines are changed into hydroxylysine and then linked to each other, and those cross-links are what give skin, tendons and bone their strength. Vitamin C is needed for that change. Lysine is also the starting material, with methionine, for carnitine, which carries fatty acids into mitochondria to be burned.
Inside cells, lysines on the histone proteins that DNA is wrapped around are tagged and untagged with small chemical groups, one of the ways cells turn genes on and off. And with leucine, lysine is one of only two amino acids the body cannot turn into glucose.
Why Grains Are Low in Lysine
What matters is not only how much protein a food has, but how much lysine that protein carries. The WHO pattern for adults is 45 mg of lysine per gram of protein. The table below compares library foods.
| Food | Per 100 g | Per g of protein | Of the pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cod | 2.1g | 94mg | 209% |
| Lentils | 0.63g | 70mg | 155% |
| Egg | 0.9g | 67mg | 149% |
| Chickpeas | 0.59g | 67mg | 149% |
| Tofu | 0.43g | 60mg | 134% |
| Oats | 0.64g | 48mg | 108% |
| Almonds | 0.56g | 27mg | 60% |
| Pasta | 0.13g | 23mg | 50% |
| Tortilla | 0.14g | 20mg | 45% |
Fish, eggs and legumes clear the pattern easily and oats just make it; almonds, wheat pasta and tortillas reach only 45 to 60% of it. That is the whole idea behind pairing grains with beans: the beans bring the lysine the grain lacks, and the grain brings sulfur amino acids that beans are lower in. The two do not have to be in the same meal; across the day is enough.
The grain side of that pairing is covered on the methionine page. For anyone who eats meat, fish or dairy, lysine is rarely the problem.
How Cooking Affects Lysine
Lysine is the amino acid most damaged by cooking. Its side chain ends in a free amino group that reacts with sugars when food is heated, the Maillard reaction that browns toast and crusts. Lysine caught up in that reaction still shows up in a lab analysis but the body cannot use it. Ordinary boiling or steaming costs little; the losses are larger in toasted, baked and dried cereal products.
Lysine Supplements
Lysine is one of the few single amino acids widely sold as a supplement, so tablets are a real source for some people.
How to Read a Lysine Supplement Label
Most tablets contain L-lysine hydrochloride (lysine HCl), which is about 80% lysine by weight. A 500 mg tablet of lysine HCl gives about 400 mg of lysine; check whether the label states the lysine or the whole compound.
What Studies Show About Lysine Supplements
- Cold soresthe main reason people take lysine; small trials gave mixed results and it is not a proven treatment
- Side effectshigh doses can cause stomach pain and diarrhea
Sources are listed at the end of this page. Not medical advice.
Tracking Lysine in Caltide
- Logged automaticallyCaltide adds up the lysine in every food you log and, once your weight is set, shows it in the Nutrition tab against the WHO amount for your body weight.
- Supplements count tooAdd your lysine tablet once with the lysine it contains, not the weight of lysine HCl. Each day you tick it off, it counts toward your total.
Lysine Sources and References
The figures and claims on this page are checked against these sources. Food amounts come from USDA FoodData Central.
Questions About Lysine
About 30 mg per kilogram of body weight, in the WHO, FAO and UNU 2007 report: 2.1 g a day for a 70 kg adult. Protein should carry about 45 mg of lysine per gram.
In the Caltide food library, bacon: 3.4 g per 100 g. Cube steak (3 g) and Beef roast (2.8 g) come next.
Because it is the essential amino acid grain protein runs out of first. Wheat pasta protein has about half the lysine per gram that the WHO pattern asks for, while bean and lentil protein has more than enough.
Yes, by eating beans, lentils, chickpeas, soy or other legumes every day. Lentils have 0.63 g per 100 g cooked, against 0.13 g in cooked pasta.
The evidence is mixed. Small trials of lysine supplements for cold sores (herpes simplex) gave conflicting results, and reviews have not found it reliably shortens or prevents outbreaks.
About 80%. L-lysine hydrochloride, the usual form in tablets, is lysine bound to hydrochloric acid, so a 1,000 mg tablet of lysine HCl holds about 800 mg of lysine.
Strong heat with sugars can lock some of it up. In browning reactions lysine binds to sugars and the body can no longer use that part, so toasted and baked cereal products lose some usable lysine.
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