Essential amino acid
Threonine
The gut's favourite. Quietly essential for mucus and collagen.
15 mg/kg/dayAbout 1.05 g a day at 70 kg
What it builds
Threonine builds mucin, the protective gel lining your gut wall, along with collagen, elastin and the proteins in tooth enamel.
It has one genuinely odd property: a large share of dietary threonine is consumed by the gut itself, on first pass, before it ever reaches general circulation. Your intestinal lining is an expensive tenant, and it takes its rent in threonine.
Where threonine actually comes from
Legumes carry threonine well, which is one more reason they anchor a plant-based diet.
Ranked by a realistic portion rather than per 100 g, because nobody eats 100 g of pumpkin seeds. Figures are digestibility-adjusted, so these are the amounts the app credits you with, not the amounts printed on the packet. Computed live from the 72 foods in the AminoLens recommender pool.
All foods
Every food in the pool, animal and plant.
| Food | Portion | Per portion |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 120 g breast | 1.49 g |
| Lamb leg | 120 g | 1.38 g |
| Pork tenderloin | 120 g | 1.34 g |
| Beef (eye of round) | 120 g | 1.34 g |
| Chicken thigh | 120 g | 1.33 g |
| Haddock | 120 g fillet | 1.16 g |
Plant-based only
Vegan foods only. The list most people actually need.
| Food | Portion | Per portion |
|---|---|---|
| Soybeans | 120 g cooked | 790 mg |
| Tempeh | 100 g | 724 mg |
| Extra-firm tofu | 150 g | 618 mg |
| Firm tofu | 150 g (half a block) | 561 mg |
| White beans | 150 g cooked | 503 mg |
| Black beans | 150 g cooked | 459 mg |
Signs you might be short
Nonspecific, and honestly this is a modelling concern rather than a lived experience. Threonine shows up as a constraint mainly in low-protein plant-based diets, and usually alongside lysine rather than instead of it.
Pairs well with
Legumes and soy do the heavy lifting. If your lysine is handled, your threonine is almost certainly handled too.
See your threonine coverage
Photograph a meal and watch where the protein actually goes.
Analyse a meal