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What Foods Are High in Collagen? Bone Broth, Gelatine and the Rest
The foods high in collagen are the parts of animals that hold them together: skin, tendon, cartilage, bone and the tough cuts around them. In a UK kitchen that means skin-on chicken and fish, pork rind, shin, oxtail, brisket and cheek, chicken feet, bone broth and stock, gelatine, and sardines and other small fish eaten with their skin and bones. Greek yoghurt, milk, cheese, eggs, nuts, beans, berries and vegetables have none; fruit and vegetables supply the vitamin C, zinc and copper the body uses to make its own, and vitamin C contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin, bones and cartilage.1, 2
- Contain collagen: chicken skin, pork rind, fish skin, shin, oxtail, brisket, tendon, chicken feet, bone broth, gelatine, sardines with bones
- Contain none: Greek yoghurt, milk, cheese, eggs, nuts, pulses, fruit, vegetables, tea, coffee
- Bone broth: under 1 g to a few grams a cup, varying by recipe; gelatine: about 85 to 90% collagen
What foods are high in collagen?
The collagen-rich foods are the ones that are chewy raw and soft after hours of cooking. Skin is the richest everyday source: pork rind and crackling, the skin on a roast chicken or a salmon fillet. Tendon, cartilage, chicken feet and wings, trotters and oxtail are richer still, and the braising cuts, shin, brisket, cheek, short rib and neck, are marbled with collagen that turns to gelatine in a slow oven. Gelatine itself is extracted, dried collagen, so a leaf, a sachet, a panna cotta or a home-made jelly all count. The membrane inside an eggshell contains collagen too, by most estimates around a tenth of its weight, though nobody eats enough of it to matter.4
Does Greek yoghurt contain collagen?
No. Greek yoghurt, milk, cheese and eggs contain no collagen, because none of them is connective tissue. The confusion comes from yoghurts and drinks sold with collagen peptides stirred in, where the collagen is an added ingredient declared on the label. Stirring unflavoured collagen powder into plain yoghurt does the same job at home, as does collagen in coffee or milk.
How much collagen is in bone broth and gelatine?
Bone broth is the least predictable collagen food there is. The protein in a cup depends on the bones, how much skin and cartilage went in and the simmering time: a thin stock holds well under a gram per 250 ml cup, a broth that sets in the fridge holds several grams, and almost all of it is gelatine. When researchers analysed home-made, café and commercial bone broths for the collagen amino acids glycine, proline and hydroxyproline, standardised recipes gave consistent but low amounts, well below a 20 g dose of collagen supplement; non-standardised broths varied widely and commercial broths were lowest.3
Gelatine is the opposite: collagen extracted from skin or bone with hot water and dried, about 85 to 90% protein and all of it collagen. A UK sachet of gelatine powder is around 12 g, so roughly 10 g of collagen; a leaf is around 2 g. A jelly sweet is sugar, glucose syrup and a few per cent gelatine, so the forum claim that a packet of jelly sweets "does the same job" would take a great many sweets. A collagen peptide is gelatine cut into short chains by a food enzyme; what bovine collagen peptides are follows that process step by step.
Is collagen from food the same as a collagen supplement?
It is the same protein: cooking turns collagen into gelatine, digestion cuts gelatine into short peptides and amino acids, and the collagen-specific fragments appear in the blood within one to two hours. A 2022 crossover study measured this directly: plain gelatine raised plasma prolyl-hydroxyproline to a peak at two hours, and a low-molecular-weight gelatine hydrolysate, which is what a collagen peptide powder is, raised the same peptides and free hydroxyproline higher still.5 Food collagen works. The differences are practical: a gelatinous stew gives you collagen with the meal and no measure of how much, while a serving of peptides gives a known amount, absorbed faster, in anything you drink.
One more point. Bones store lead, and a small 2013 study found chicken-bone broth carried several times the lead of the tap water it was made with, at 7 to 9.5 micrograms per litre; a larger 2017 analysis put lead and cadmium in home-made and commercial broths at a few micrograms per serving and the risk as minimal.7, 8 Neither is a reason to stop making stock. Together they are a reason to vary your sources rather than drink broth by the litre.
Which foods help the body make collagen?
The body builds collagen from amino acids with the help of three micronutrients. Vitamin C is needed by the enzymes that lock the collagen triple helix together; adults need 40 mg a day, and a pepper, an orange or a serving of broccoli each supplies that.1, 2 Zinc contributes to normal protein synthesis and to the maintenance of normal skin, hair and nails, from meat, shellfish, dairy, bread and pulses. Copper contributes to the maintenance of normal connective tissues, from nuts, shellfish and offal.9 Protein contributes to the maintenance of normal bones and muscle mass, and supplies the glycine and proline collagen is mostly made of. What vitamins to take with collagen covers the pairings.
Are there vegan or vegetarian foods that contain collagen?
No. Collagen is made only by animals, so no plant, seaweed, mushroom or grain contains it, and "vegan collagen" products are blends of vitamin C, zinc, copper and amino acids meant to support the body's own production: a reasonable thing to take and an inaccurate thing to call collagen. What destroys collagen covers the other half of the question: protecting what the body already makes. Fig latex contains an enzyme that breaks collagen down, which is why figs tenderise meat; berries, garlic and greens supply vitamin C and no collagen.10
What drink has a lot of collagen?
Bone broth is the only ordinary drink that contains collagen, and the amount varies cup to cup. Tea, coffee, milk and juice contain none; orange juice supplies vitamin C, and collagen powder in orange juice explains why that helps the body make collagen rather than absorb it. Collagen drinks are supplements in liquid form; compare grams of collagen per serving.
A day of eating 10 g of collagen from food
Here is what the 10 g a day used in the knee osteoarthritis trials looks like on a plate. Every figure is an estimate: published collagen values for whole foods are scarce, and a cut or a broth varies by animal, butcher and recipe.
| Meal | Food and portion | Approximate collagen (estimate) |
|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | A 90 g tin of sardines, skin and bones included, on toast | 1 to 2 g |
| Mid-morning | A 250 ml cup of home-made bone broth, simmered 8 hours or more | 2 to 4 g |
| Lunch | A skin-on roast chicken thigh, skin eaten | 1 to 2 g |
| Dinner | 150 g slow-cooked beef shin or oxtail, with the cooking liquid | 4 to 6 g |
| Pudding | A home-made fruit jelly set with one 2 g gelatine leaf | About 2 g |
| Total | Roughly 10 to 16 g |
It is a good day's eating, and a lot of connective tissue to want every day. By comparison, a 10 g serving of collagen peptides supplies 10 g, the same tomorrow and the day after, as about 36 kcal of protein and nothing else, inside the 2.5 to 15 g the trials used. How much collagen to take a day sets out the dose behind each outcome.
Where a collagen supplement fits
The trials used a measured daily dose because a result in skin hydration or knee comfort appears only after eight to twelve weeks of the same amount every day; the 2023 meta-analysis of 26 trials that found collagen peptides improved skin hydration and elasticity was built on that consistency.6 A diet with connective tissue in it is the foundation; a daily serving makes the dose certain. How to choose a collagen supplement explains how to read a specification, and the Wellgard collagen guide covers what the trials found.
Frequently asked questions
What food is very high in collagen?
By weight, pork rind, tendon, chicken feet and fish skin, then slow-cooked cuts such as shin, oxtail and cheek. Gelatine beats all of them because it is extracted collagen.
Is bone broth a good source of collagen?
A real source and an unreliable one: several grams of gelatine a cup if it sets in the fridge, under a gram if it is thin.3 Count it as a contribution rather than a dose.
Is collagen just gelatine?
Gelatine is collagen that heat has unwound; collagen peptides are gelatine cut shorter by a food enzyme. Gelatine raises the same collagen peptides in the blood as a supplement does, a little less and a little later.5
Sources
- Pullar JM, Carr AC, Vissers MCM. The roles of vitamin C in skin health. Nutrients, 2017. PubMed 28805671.
- NHS. Vitamin C. nhs.uk.
- Alcock RD, Shaw GC, Burke LM. Bone broth unlikely to provide reliable concentrations of collagen precursors compared with supplemental sources of collagen used in collagen research. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 2019. PubMed 29893587.
- Ahmed TA, Suso HP, Hincke MT. In-depth comparative analysis of the chicken eggshell membrane proteome. Journal of Proteomics, 2017. PubMed 28087451.
- Iwasaki Y, et al. Comparison of gelatin and low-molecular weight gelatin hydrolysate ingestion on hydroxyproline (Hyp), Pro-Hyp and Hyp-Gly concentrations in human blood. Food Chemistry, 2022. PubMed 34461513.
- Pu SY, et al. Effects of oral collagen for skin anti-aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutrients, 2023. PubMed 37432180.
- Monro JA, Leon R, Puri BK. The risk of lead contamination in bone broth diets. Medical Hypotheses, 2013. PubMed 23375414.
- Hsu DJ, et al. Essential and toxic metals in animal bone broths. Food and Nutrition Research, 2017. PubMed 28804437.
- NHS. Vitamins and minerals: others, including copper and zinc. nhs.uk.
- Raskovic B, et al. Identification, purification and characterization of a novel collagenolytic serine protease from fig (Ficus carica var. Brown Turkey) latex. Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering, 2014. PubMed 24982021.
This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have gout, kidney disease or have been told to limit protein, speak to your GP before adding a collagen supplement.
