Walk into any pharmacy in urban India, or scroll through videos from wellness influencers on social media, and you'll find powders, gummies and drinks promising to boost your collagen. When placed conspicuously at billing counters, much like bubble gum and candy used to be a decade ago, customers are prompted to make a last-minute collagen purchase. More protein bars now list it as an ingredient, too, touting its benefits for healthy skin, bones and joints. Propelled by these claims, India’s market for these products stood at nearly $65 million in 2024. Recently, ‘vegan collagen’ has joined the growing list of offerings in this segment of the supplement market. The name, however, can be misleading: plants do not contain collagen.
It is the most abundant protein in the human body, making up about 30% of our total protein. But we don’t simply absorb the collagen that we consume directly (from animal sources). So what actually happens to it inside our bodies—and can consuming it via food items or supplements really help us make more of the bodily protein we’re trying to preserve?
We don’t simply absorb the collagen that we consume directly.
Molecular mysteries and misnomers
Imagine your body as a suspension bridge. The steel cables aren't glamorous—you notice them only when they fray—but without them, the bridge begins to weaken. Collagen is one of those cables.
Specialised cells in our bodies called ‘fibroblasts’ are responsible for synthesising it. They act like protein factories, linking together amino acids (primarily glycine, proline and hydroxyproline) to make collagen. Collagen molecules are rope-like structures which can withstand a lot of stress. This makes them the perfect scaffolding for our bodies, giving tendons their tensile strength, bones much of their framework, and cushioning cartilage.
What consumers often get wrong is that this protein is not simply a tank that you can refill. “Collagen is not a single substance but a family of more than 28 classes, each serving different functions in the body,” says Mumbai-based dermatologist Dr. Manasi Shirolikar. Ingested collagen doesn’t travel intact to the dermis; its molecules are too large to pass through the skin’s outer barrier. This fundamental nature is why supplements—vegan, or otherwise—are not the answer to boosting its reserves. Our body cannot digest whole, native collagen ‘as is.’
Collagen molecules are triple-helix, rope-like structures. They lend tensile strength and a framework to our tendons and bones (Credit: NIH Photo Gallery via Wikimedia Commons)Natural collagen molecules (from food, or supplements) are enormous and tightly bound. Digestive enzymes like pepsin break them down into individual amino acids and di/tri-peptides (chains of two and three amino acids respectively), says Dr. Shirolikar. This is why most oral supplements are in the form of hydrolysed collagen (or collagen peptides), where the collagen has already been artificially broken down into tiny chains, so your gastrointestinal tract can digest and absorb it much more efficiently. However, even these contain peptides too large for direct absorption into your skin or joints.
Collagen molecules are rope-like structures which can withstand a lot of stress. This makes them the perfect scaffolding for our bodies.
Even though supplements may be marketed as collagen builders, our bodies don’t preserve these distinctions. The acid in our gut denatures these molecules, rerouting them wherever necessary, perhaps to make keratin for our hair. Or the peptides may form collagen that gets deposited in other parts of the body, such as cartilage, bone, muscles, or tendons. It’s not necessarily going to manufacture the collagen that gives us the glowing skin we’re pinching our wallets for.
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A marketing gimmick
The beauty industry’s fascination with collagen began in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when it first appeared as an ingredient in skin creams and serums, touted to enhance elasticity. However, its effectiveness as a topical (directly on the skin) application was doubted by dermatologists early on, as collagen is not naturally found on the skin’s surface but in the deeper layers. Skincare products containing collagen only temporarily moistened and plumped up skin, appearing to reduce fine lines and wrinkles. People continue to be drawn to these products possibly because a structural protein is marketed as a shortcut to a youthful appearance. These marketing claims are ambitious at best, and ridiculous at worst (some promise to improve skin ‘texture’ by up to 42%!). Elasticity aside, they are promoted as a way to reduce fine lines, improve hydration, brighten the complexion, or even thicken hair.
Your body doesn't need collagen from food to produce collagen. It needs the raw materials and the right nutrients.
Collagen is found naturally only in animal connective tissue. Foods richest in collagen include tougher cuts of red meat, as well as the skin and bones of freshwater and saltwater fish. Bone broth and gelatin, made by simmering animal bones with a little vinegar for several hours, are often promoted as health foods. ‘Vegan’ collagen then, is largely a marketing gimmick, and has become a buzzword because it promises to cater to India’s large vegetarian demographic.
What slips unnoticed is that these supplements are labelled as ‘boosters’ or ‘builders.’ They contain plant-derived amino acids (glycine, proline, lysine) plus cofactors (helper molecules) like vitamin C, copper, zinc, silica, and at times, hyaluronic acid. “They contain zero actual collagen,” Dr. Shirolikar clarifies.
So do vegetarians get only limited access to the fountain of youth? “Definitely not,” affirms Dr Shirolikar. "Your body doesn't need collagen from food to produce collagen. It needs the raw materials and the right nutrients." It is always built from scratch inside the body (since both builders and collagen from whole foods are broken down into a common pool of amino acids). To do this, it first needs enough dietary protein to supply amino acids, which can come from legumes, grains, soy, nuts, seeds, dairy or eggs.
Collagen molecules are large and tightly bound, and cannot be directly absorbed as is into the skin's matrix (Illustration by David S. Goodsell, RCSB Protein Data Bank via Wikimedia Commons)To make collagen, the body also depends on vitamin C, an essential cofactor that supports the enzymes stabilising the newly formed collagen fibres by modifying proline and lysine. Without enough vitamin C, collagen is produced but remains weak and unstable—the underlying mechanism behind scurvy. Minerals such as copper, zinc and manganese also support different stages of formation and cross-linking. “As long as you're meeting your protein and micronutrient needs, your body can make perfectly healthy collagen—even if you've never eaten it in your life,” Dr Shirolikar adds.
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Youth cannot be bottled
What justifies a continued interest in supplements, Dr. Shirolkar explains, is this: “Collagen hydrolysate delivers an unusually glycine/proline/hydroxyproline-rich amino acid pool that ordinary dietary protein doesn't replicate as efficiently.” Some of these peptide chains resist being broken down into individual amino acids and may act as ‘signalling molecules.’ That is, “they may reach dermal fibroblasts in our body and stimulate them to produce more collagen and hyaluronic acid,” she adds.
Most people forget that a decline in collagen is a natural outcome of aging. Production declines by roughly a percent every year, starting from the mid-twenties. Any pill purporting that it can magically fill that ‘tank’ should be taken with a grain of salt. There’s some early, encouraging research, but a lack of randomised controlled trials (which are the gold standard for testing dietary supplements); in any case, there is not enough knowledge to substantiate the rapidly growing collagen market in India and across the world. Many of these supplements are not vetted by state drug administrations. Moreover, several studies are funded by the very nutraceutical companies who stand to gain by expanding the collagen market.
Marine collagen supplements (extracted from the skin, scales and bones of fish) also come with safety considerations. Fish in polluted waters store heavy metals in their tissues. Supplements derived from seafood may especially be contaminated by methylmercury, which damages the nervous system. Like other dietary supplements, they are not evaluated for safety or effectiveness before reaching the market. Together, these concerns complicate the idea that collagen supplements are both environmentally benign and inherently risk-free.
Dr. Shirolikar’s advice is to stick to the basics that keep our bodies well-oiled every day: using sunscreen, getting enough sleep and smoking less. “If there's one intervention with the strongest evidence for preserving collagen, it's broad-spectrum sunscreen. UV exposure activates matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs)—enzymes that break down collagen, making sun protection the single most effective defence against premature skin ageing.” Adequate dietary protein and micronutrients like vitamin C, zinc and copper may be less glamorous, but they're the essential building blocks for collagen synthesis. Without them, nothing else works as well.
Photoprotection and adequate sleep (during which growth hormone pulses drive tissue repair) have better-established effects on slowing down collagen breakdown than any other oral supplement. Supplements are reasonable to try, but evidence to their benefits is modest and inconsistent, Dr. Shirolikar says. They shouldn’t replace the fundamentals!
The most accurate way to think about collagen supplements is that they don't replace lost collagen or become skin collagen. At best, they may provide some of the ingredients—and perhaps some molecular signals—that support your body's own collagen factory. Everything else still depends on the same fundamentals: protecting collagen from damage, eating enough protein and getting the nutrients needed to build it in the first place.
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Edited by Anushka Mukherjee and Neerja Deodhar
Slider Credit: NIH Photo Gallery via Wikimedia Commons