Glycine Powder

Free of: Sugar, soy, dairy, yeast, gluten, corn and additives.

What is Glycine Powder?  Glycine is an amino acid, or a building block for protein. The body can make glycine on its own, but it is also consumed in the diet. A typical diet contains about 2 grams of glycine daily. The primary sources are protein-rich foods including meat, fish, dairy, and legumes. Glycine can also be taken as a supplement.

History of Glycine Powder  Glycine was discovered in 1820 by the French chemist Henri Braconnot when he hydrolyzed gelatin by boiling it with sulfuric acid. He originally called it “sugar of gelatin”, but the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Boussingault showed that it contained nitrogen. The American scientist Eben Norton Horsford, then a student of the German chemist Justus von Liebig, proposed the name “glycocoll”; however, the Swedish chemist Berzelius suggested the simpler name “glycine”. The name comes from the Greek word γλυκύς “sweet tasting” (which is also related to the prefixes glyco- and gluco-, as in glycoprotein and glucose). In 1858, the French chemist Auguste Cahours determined that glycine was an amine of acetic acid.

Production of Glycine Powder  Although glycine can be isolated from hydrolyzed protein, this is not used for industrial production, as it can be manufactured more conveniently by chemical synthesis. The two main processes are amination of chloroacetic acid with ammonia, giving glycine and ammonium chloride, and the Strecker amino acid synthesis, which is the main synthetic method in the United States and Japan. About 15 thousand tons are produced annually in this way. Glycine is also cogenerated as an impurity in the synthesis of EDTA, arising from reactions of the ammonia coproduct.