Eat These 10 Collagen-Rich Foods EVERY WEEK After 50!

By the time you turn 50, your body had already lost around 35% of the collagen that it has, and it loses every single year after that point. It's a big deal because collagen is what holds your skin together, your joints, your bones, your muscles, even the lining of your guts, all your digestive system and the walls of your arteries. So when collagen drops, you don't just get wrinkles, your whole body starts falling apart. So that's why in this video, I'm going to show you the 10 collagen rich foods that you should be eating each day or each week after the age of 50, especially. And then the simple pro tips that decide whether you actually absorb the collagen. Otherwise it just goes to waste. And then at the end, I'll reveal one food aging experts call the single best food for collagen production. And I guarantee it's not the one that you think. So let's go. Number one, to start, I'm going to show you the food that delivers more collagen faster than anything else that you can possibly eat. Millions of people are spending money on glucosamine and chondroitin, all these pills for their joints every single month. Almost none of them realize those exact compounds are sitting inside of food that humans have been making for thousands of years. And I'm talking about bone broth. When you simmer animal bones, beef, chicken, fish, 12 to 24 hours, the collagen locked inside of those bones dissolves right out into the water. That's what gelatin essentially is collagen after it's been cooked. And once the gelatin hits your gut, it breaks down into the exact amino acids that your body uses to then rebuild your skin and your joints and the lining of that gut. So a well-made bone broth delivers between six and 12 grams of collagen. Plus those joint protecting compounds that people keep buying in pill form, along with a lot of minerals, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, you're even getting eight to 10 grams of protein per cup, which helps those muscles that desperately need extra protein, especially after the age of 50. Now, here's the stuff that frustrates me about bone broth is that the store-bought bone broth oftentimes just doesn't live up to the hype. A lot of the bone broths have been tested and some contained as little as one gram of collagen per cup. So you might be paying premium prices for what's basically salty flavored water with almost none of the collagen that you thought you were paying for. So the good news is, is there's a 10 second test that tells you whether any broth is the real deal. Simply put it in the fridge overnight. If it turns solid, kind of jiggly like jello, then it's loaded with gelatin, which means it's loaded with collagen. If it stays liquid, not a lot of collagen in there, not a lot of gelatin in there. Now, the easiest way to guarantee that your bone broth is giving you the collagen that you need is to make it yourself. Ask the butcher at your store or something leftover that you cooked, toss the bones into a pot or a slow cooker, cover them with water, add in splash of apple cider vinegar, some seasoning if you'd like. The acid of the apple cider vinegar pulls extra minerals out of the bones and into the broth, so then your body can actually use them. And just let that simmer for 12 hours. The longer it goes, the more collagen you extract. Once it's ready, all you need is a cup a day. You can drink it straight from a mug, you can use it as a soup base, you could cook with it, could make rice dishes with it. Number two, next, I want to show you the most common collagen mistake, at least here in the United States, one you've probably been making at the grocery store for decades. For years, the fitness world told everyone that the healthiest chicken you can buy is the boneless, skinless breast. It became the most popular cut in the country. I certainly went down that road, right? Whenever I bought chicken, it was always boneless, skinless. And for pure muscle, it does the trick. Or maybe for your palate, it does the trick. But for your joints and your skin, it's one of the worst that you can choose. It's because almost all of the chicken's collagen is concentrated in the skin, the cartilage, and the connective tissue around the bones. The exact parts that you've been trained to cut off and to throw away, the breast meat has almost no collagen. The collagen in chicken is a specific kind called type 2. That's the same collagen that your joint cartilage is made of. The cushioning between your bones in your knees, or your hips, or your shoulders. In fact, most type 2 collagen supplements on the market are literally manufactured from chicken cartilage. So when you eat chicken with the skin on or the bone in, you're feeding your joints more of the exact raw material that they're built from. Just make sure that you choose the thigh or the leg and the wings, ideally over the breast, as they carry far more skin and connective tissues per bite. And then eat the skin if you're looking to get more collagen. When you roast a chicken, pay attention to those brown drippings at the bottom of the pan. That's loose collagen. Most people pour it straight into the drain. Instead, add a cup of water to the hot pan, scrape up the brown bits, put it over medium heat. In about three minutes, you've got a collagen-rich sauce for free. Then when the meal's over, you can keep those bones, drop them in the slow cooker, just like with point number one, add the water, add a splash of vinegar, and let it run overnight. Wake up in the morning for some premium bone broth at zero cost. Let's go to number three. I want to show you why one of the biggest spenders at the meat counter are getting the least collagen out of their money. And the big spending ticket item at the meat counter is a filet. It's one of the most expensive cuts. Delicious, right? The reason it's so tender is that it contains almost no connective tissue. So by now, you probably guessed what that means. Almost no collagen. The cuts loaded with collagen are the cheaper, tougher, unfashionable ones that no one really brags about, right? The oxtail, the chuck roast, the short ribs, the beef cheeks, the brisket, the beef shank. Oxtail's the king of them when it comes to collagen because it's mostly bone, cartilage, connective tissue. When you slow cook it for several hours, that collagen melts into the cooking liquid. And a broth made from oxtail delivers the same six to 12 grams of collagen per cup as premium bone broth. Now, the collagen in beef is mostly type one and type three. These are my favorites because so many of us need support when it comes to the health of our skin, the aging of it, our blood vessel linings, tendons, and strength of our joints. So while chicken is feeding the joints, the cartilage in between, beef is rebuilding your skin, your arteries, and the tendons moving the joints. On top of that, slow cook beef bones release calcium, phosphorus, magnesium straight into the liquid from the marrow. Now, in order to get the most out of it, use a slow cooker on low for six to eight hours or a pressure cooker probably 90 minutes if you're using that. That's what melts that collagen out of those tough cuts. Save every drop of that braising liquid because that liquid is premium collagen as well. It's a good broth all by itself. The living goods on about a weekly basis, we will do a brisket or a roast in the slow cooker. And it's how we just turn one of the cheapest sections of the cut at the meat counter into one of the most powerful anti-aging tools. Get a big dose of collagen each week and it's delicious. And the little living goods actually love it as well. So that's what we do. Let's go to number four. I want to show you the cheapest food on the entire list. And believe it or not, it's also one of the most complete. I'm going to talk about sardines. Might not be your cup of tea. However, a can of wild caught sardines costs about $3 and they're a secret weapon, especially for something that most people consider as a drawback, their size. Because sardines are so small, you eat the entire fish, which means you eat the meat, skin, bones, and all. And the skin and bones are exactly where that collagen lives. So instead of getting just one piece of the fish, you're getting the complete marine collagen package in every bite. And marine collagen, the kind that comes from fish, has the smallest particles of any collagen source on earth. Smaller particles pass through your intestinal walls faster and easier, which makes this one of the most absorbable forms of food collagen that you can eat. It's a big deal after 50 because your digestion isn't pulling nutrients out of the foods the way that it used to be. This will help it to get more absorbed. But here's what makes sardines truly special. You're eating the bones and that does something for your own bones that almost no other food can do. Picture your bones as a building. The frame of that building is collagen. The calcium is the concrete packed around that frame to make it hard and strong. If the collagen frame breaks down, the calcium has nothing to hold on to and then the whole structure falls apart. That's how people end up with rigidity, brutal bones, even when they're taking lots of calcium every single day. I don't normally teach to take lots of calcium because it's usually not the underlying issue. We usually eat enough of it. We're just not using it in the frame of our building. So then the stakes could not be higher. One in two women over 50 will break a bone because of osteoporosis and a broken hip later in life. 24% chance of death within a year. This is what I studied in doctorate school. This was my thesis. Those falls and that breakage can lead to a downfall. So here's where sardines come in because when you eat them whole, they give you both halves of the equation in the same bite. The soft edible bones, one of the best non-dairy sources of calcium you can find. And then the collagen rides along to rebuild the frame that calcium needs to stick to. On top of that, one serving delivers about 18 grams of protein, half your daily vitamin D, which your body uses to crank up its own collagen production. Number five, let's go to some more fish, most popular fish, especially here in the States. The valuable part of it, most people peel off and toss in the trash. So I want to give you a little tip here. When you order a salmon in a restaurant, you've probably asked for the skin to be removed or you simply eat around it, pull it off, throw it away. But it's the skin where the marine collagen lives. In fact, collagen taken from salmon skin is so potent that researchers use it in actual wound healing studies. It's been shown to speed up skin repair and increase collagen levels in the skin itself. So every time that skin hits the garbage can, you're throwing away the closest thing to a medical grade collagen source in your kitchen. You're also throwing away something else that your body needs arguably just as badly, if not more omega-3 fats called EPA and DHA, which do only come from these animal sources like fish. Chronic low-level inflammation is one of the main forces breaking down the collagen that you already have. It activates enzymes that chew through collagen fibers in your skin and your joints day after day. And omega-3s help to support and calm that inflammation down. So salmon works as that two-punch combination. The skin supplies new collagen while the omega-3s protect the collagen already in your body from being destroyed. You're also getting about 22 grams of complete protein here in a single three-ounce serving, which your muscles need more and more of after the age of 50. Now obviously the problem is that people skip the skin because it's soggy salmon skin and it's genuinely unpleasant. So I totally get it, okay? The fix is to make it crispy. You pan sear the filet skin side down in a hot pan. Press it flat with the spatula for the first 30 seconds. Don't flip it until the skin turns golden and crisp. If it's done right, it eats like a salty, crunchy chip. It allows you to get those nutrients and skip the ugh on the palate. Number six, pay close attention in the next one because you can eat every single food that I've covered thus far and then still fail to build collagen. Here's the piece almost no one talks about. Deep in your skin, joints, connective tissue, there are cells called fibroblasts. They're the workers. They're actually assembling collagen, stitching it together, laying down the collagen. Those workers physically cannot do their job without one specific mineral, zinc. Zinc is what scientists call a cofactor, which simply means that collagen building machinery doesn't run without it. You can deliver truckloads of raw material from broth and chicken and beef and fish, but if your zinc is low, the assembly line never turns on. Low zinc is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in adult over 50. So the food for this section is the most concentrated zinc source on the planet, and that is oysters. Just six medium oysters deliver 100% of your daily zinc requirement. They also bring some serious amounts of copper, which acts like the bolts of the operation. Very important with vitamin D and zinc and the balance between all of those. It cross-links your collagen fibers together, so they're strong and durable instead of weak and fragmented. These are the things that allow collagen to do its job in the first place. Now with oysters, even better, they deliver zinc and copper in their natural ratio. It's important because high doses of zinc supplements on their own can actually drain your copper, but the food version protects you from that automatically. And no, you don't need to order a dozen raw oysters on the half shell at some expensive restaurant. You can smoke oysters from the grocery store, and then it's three to five bucks and delivers the same zinc and the copper. You can eat them a couple times a week or once a week, and the assembly line stays powered. Not for everyone palate-wise, but extremely powerful food. I love when food has what we need. We just need to eat the right kind. Next up is the easiest food in this list to start using tomorrow. Let's go to eggs, okay? Every collagen fiber in your body is three strands twisted together like a braided rope, right? That is what collagen looks like. Those strands are built from three specific amino acids, glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. Egg whites happen to be one of the richest sources of proline that you can eat, and they deliver the other two right along with it. So while eggs are simple, they hand your body the exact parts and exact lists of needs that it has to assemble new collagen. But there's a bigger reason eggs are so important after 50. One that you might've heard me talk about before, starting around age 50, you lose roughly 8% of your muscle every single decade, and after 70, that loss doubles in speed. It is called sarcopenia. It is one of the strongest predictors of losing your strength, your balance, and eventually your independence. And here's the connection. This is key. The same amino acids your body uses to rebuild collagen are the same ones it uses to rebuild muscle. So after 50, you're fighting collagen loss and muscle loss at the same time, and eggs win both fights at once. They're a complete protein with all nine amino acids that your muscles need, and they carry those collagen building blocks at the same time. It's two foods worth of protection in one shell. Now, a couple of tips here. Don't skip the yolk. That's where vitamin A, D, B12, that's where they all live. And your skin uses those to renew itself and support collagen production. And if you've been scared of eggs because of cholesterol, you can relax. The science has shifted in a big way over the last decade. The real driver of high cholesterol turned out to be processed food, fried foods, and low-quality oils and sugars. Eggs get the blame for what was sitting next to them on the plate for so many years. That's why major health organizations have dropped the old limit on dietary cholesterol and why three to four eggs a day is perfectly safe for the vast majority of people and an excellent way to start your day and your protein amount and your collagen. Number eight. So far, every food that we've shown helps you build collagen. The next one does the opposite job and it's just as important. Right now, as you're watching this, your existing collagen is being broken down. It's being destroyed. It's being used by your body. The attackers of this that break it down and impact it the most are called free radicals. Unstable molecules that slam into your collagen fibers and they fragment them piece by piece. They come from too much sunlight, air pollution, processed foods, alcohol. Even your body's own normal metabolism kicks these off. The unsettling part, by the time you see a wrinkle in the mirror, those free radicals have been shredding the collagen underneath your skin for years. So this food earns a spot on the list by playing defense and I'm talking about berries. The deep colors in blueberries and blackberries and raspberries come from compounds called anthocyanins which act like bodyguards for your collagen. They neutralize free radicals before those molecules ever reach those collagen fibers. This has been measured in a 2025 research review and they found that antioxidants in berries reduce oxidative stress in aging skin. They increase the collagen content in older skin layers and they improve elasticity. So with every other food in this video, you're laying new bricks, but with berries, you're stopping the wrecking crew. Now there are a few rules to get this right. First, the darker the berry, the stronger the protection. Blackberries, blueberries, lead the pack here. You want to eat them raw because heat breaks down the very antioxidants you're after. Consistency beats quantity, okay? Just a little bit, small handful every day outperforms a giant bowl once a week. Some studies show that real skin improvements used daily berry consumption over a month or more. So daily, that's really start to see them. Toss them into a smoothie, sprinkle them onto the top of a yogurt. You can eat them straight from the carton. It's okay if you freeze them, it will hold the nutrients, right? But don't heat them. Let's go to number nine. It brings us to the moment that I promised you at the start of the video. The one food aging experts call the single best food for collagen production. After everything we've covered, the broth, the fish, the slow cooked beef, you'd expect this food to be the most collagen packed of them all. But here's the twist. This food contains zero collagen, not a single gram. I'm talking about a red bell pepper. Remember the braided rope we just talked about? The enzymes that lock that braid into its final shape cannot function without one nutrient, vitamin C. Without it, the strands that your body assembles are unstable and then they collapse and get broken down before they can ever become real collagen. This is exactly what happened to sailors with scurvy centuries ago. Their gums bled, old wounds split back open, their bodies fell apart. Because without the vitamin C, the collagen was collapsing faster than it could be built. That's how non-negotiable that this is. Add a single red bell pepper, right? That delivers around 169% of your daily value of vitamin C. A cup of chopped red pepper has nearly three times the vitamin C of an orange. That's why I like it so much. Because we always think orange when we think vitamin C. Red bell pepper is even easier. But here's the part that makes this the most valuable 30 seconds of the video. Research shows the timing matters. When vitamin C is in your system at the same time your body is processing collagen, synthesis goes up significantly. So the strategy is simple. Eat raw red bell peppers at the same time as your collagen foods. Slices next to your eggs or strips alongside your salmon or chopped pepper with your bowl of broth. That one habit multiplies the power of every other food that I've showed you today. Ideally, keep it raw. If you do saute them, just don't overcook them. Starts to destroy a big chunk of the vitamin C if you do and roasting them alone wipes out about 25% of it. Still valuable, right? Better than nothing. I'd take it over a lot of foods, but just to be aware of that. Number 10, before we wrap it up, I got to be straight with you about a problem that food alone runs into after 50. Because if I skip this part, I wouldn't be giving you the full picture. The collagen inside whole food is massive, tightly coiled protein. So your gut has to do serious work to break it apart into pieces that are small enough and then get it absorbed so then your body can use it. After 50, your stomach produces less acid and fewer digestive enzymes, which are the tools needed for that job. So as a result, your body absorbs about 25% or less of the collagen in whole food as you age. And if you compare that to a hydrolyzed collagen peptide, collagens that have already been untwisted and broken down into tiny fragments before you ever even swallow it, that absorbs at over 90%. Clinical studies show that real results for skin, joints, bones use between five and 15 grams of collagen every day. And if you use it each day for months at a time, that's when the results start to show up. So hitting 10 grams from food means around two cups of homemade bone broth plus a serving of skin on fish or chicken every day without missing. Some days you'll get there with the foods on this list, but like I said, we're not eating oysters every day. So most days we come up short. That's the gap that a quality collagen supplement closes. It locks in your dose every day with zero guesswork, and it's much more friendly on the palate. So now before you haul off and you go buy a collagen supplement, you should know how to get the most out of them. Much of the collagen on the market comes from grain fed cows, which like meat opens up exposure to hormones and antibiotics and other toxins. A lot of them aren't third party properly tested. And then your body also can't use collagen remember, without the presence of vitamin C, without the presence of zinc, which you now understand better probably than most doctors, yet most collagen powders don't include any of that. So for myself, I built my own. It's called the Living Good Daily Collagen Plus Multivitamin. I designed it to check the boxes that I just described, right? So it starts with that clean grass fed collagen types one and three, the ones that your skin, your hair, your nails, gut lining, that's what they're built from. Then I added vitamin C right into the formula to boost the absorption along with zinc and a little bit of copper. So now we've got all of it. So the collagen that you take in actually gets put to work. And because I wanted one scoop to do as much as possible, I also packed it full of a complete multivitamin. So then you've got real chelated minerals, chelated forms of copper, chelated forms of zinc that are even easier absorbed than regular. Added in milk thistle to support the liver during this process for your weight loss goals and your free radical support and fiber as well to help that digestive system out. And it makes you feel more full so you don't eat as much. So that one comes in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, all naturally sweetened with organic monk fruit. And then if you'd rather skip the sweetness altogether, there's also an unflavored version. So either way, it stirs right into your morning coffee, comes together, and it makes you feel more full. You can add it to a smoothie very easily. So if you want to try it, I'll put a link to it below this video. Now, the foods in this video will rebuild your body's structure, your joints, your skin, your bones. But what good is doing that if you're not also taking care of your mind and your muscles at the same time? You already know you're losing up to 8% of your muscle every decade. But what you might not know is that your brain is shrinking too, about half a percent every year after the age of 60. That's the fog, the loss of train of thought, walking into a room and you're, what was I in here for? So fortunately, people in their 50s, their 60s, their 70s have boosted their strength up to 40% in just 12 weeks with a method that takes just 10 minutes a day. And the same approach can actually regrow brain volume. So I break that whole blueprint down in my other video, how to reverse aging naturally after 50. I will include a link to that right here. Click it to watch it next, and I'll see you there.