Suggestion: test VeCollal as an animal-free replacement for Blueprint collagen
To Bryan,
I wanted to suggest something that seems unusually well aligned with Blueprint's philosophy of continually replacing an intervention when a cleaner or better-supported alternative becomes available: testing VeCollal as a replacement for animal-derived collagen peptides.
I noticed that your current protocol still recommends roughly 20–30 g of collagen peptides per day, and the Blueprint Collagen product currently contains predominantly Type I/III collagen peptides from bovine hide together with chicken-derived cartilage/undenatured Type II collagen.
There is now an interesting animal-free alternative that I think merits a direct Blueprint comparison.
VeCollal is not merely the usual “vegan collagen booster” consisting of vitamin C and a few plant extracts. It is a biomimetic formulation designed around the amino-acid composition of human Type I collagen. Its amino acids are produced through fermentation rather than extracted from animals, and the formulation also includes vitamin C, Centella asiatica-derived compounds and ginseng-derived compounds intended to support collagen synthesis.
Bulk.com currently sells an accessible formulation containing VeCollal as its “Vegan Collagen,” although Blueprint could presumably source the underlying VeCollal ingredient directly and formulate it without the flavourings/sweeteners used in the retail Bulk product. Bulk's 8-g serving supplies approximately 5 g of the active VeCollal formulation.
What particularly caught my attention is that VeCollal has actually undergone a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled human trial with an active fish-collagen comparator, rather than relying solely on biochemical reasoning.
The 2024 Journal of Functional Foods study (Lin et al.; clinical trial NCT05789368) randomized 90 adults to:
- 5 g/day VeCollal
- 5 g/day fish collagen
- placebo
for eight weeks. Instrumental measurements included collagen density, elasticity, hydration and standardized imaging of wrinkles, texture and pores.
Compared with placebo, VeCollal increased measured collagen density by approximately 4.7% and elasticity by 5.1%, while wrinkle measurements fell approximately 27.5%. Hydration, texture and pore measurements also improved. Importantly, the results were broadly comparable with the fish-collagen arm. The investigators reported no significant changes in measured liver or renal safety parameters during the eight-week study.
The paper also declared no known competing financial interests, although obviously a single 90-person, eight-week study is nowhere near enough to regard equivalence to animal collagen as settled science.
That uncertainty is precisely why I think this might make an excellent Blueprint experiment.
Why eliminate animal collagen if the results prove equivalent?
There are several reasons beyond vegan ethics.
Animal-derived collagen inevitably introduces species-specific sourcing and biological-risk considerations that a fermentation-derived amino-acid formulation simply does not have.
For bovine products, transmissible spongiform encephalopathy/prion risk has historically required dedicated regulatory controls. I don't want to exaggerate this point: FDA considers current exposure to BSE from properly regulated cattle-derived human food negligible, and EFSA regards collagen produced from bovine hides/skins as a safe commodity in this regard. Since Blueprint uses bovine hide, I am not suggesting that Blueprint collagen presents a meaningful BSE risk.
Rather, the interesting question is:
If an animal-free intervention gives the same physiological benefit, why retain an animal-origin exposure pathway at all?
The same principle applies more broadly to allergies and biological variability. Mammalian-derived materials can be problematic in alpha-gal syndrome, while fish collagen itself has been identified as an allergen in a subset of fish-allergic people. These aren't reasons to characterize collagen supplements generally as unsafe, but they are disadvantages that disappear when the functional ingredient can be manufactured without animal tissue.
I also appreciate that Blueprint already third-party tests its collagen for heavy metals, contaminants and toxins, so contamination is not a fair criticism of your particular product.
The more interesting argument is one of eliminating unnecessary biological source complexity.
A Blueprint test could answer what the existing study cannot
Your current dose is much higher than the 5-g dose evaluated in the VeCollal study, and Blueprint collagen also contains a small amount of undenatured chicken Type II collagen. So I don't think the existing evidence justifies simply declaring the two products equivalent.
Instead, it would be fascinating to conduct a prospective crossover or parallel comparison such as:
Current Blueprint collagen → VeCollal → washout/control, with objective measurements of:
- skin collagen density
- skin elasticity
- wrinkle/texture imaging
- joint symptoms and function
- tendon/connective-tissue outcomes
- exercise recovery
- bone-turnover markers where appropriate
- relevant collagen synthesis/degradation biomarkers
You could also establish whether the 5-g biomimetic dose is sufficient or whether a larger dose produces additional benefit.
If VeCollal maintained the same outcomes as 20 g of bovine collagen, that would be particularly interesting because it might reduce the required daily material considerably.
The one important caveat is Type II collagen. VeCollal is designed primarily around human Type I collagen amino-acid composition and isn't an equivalent to undenatured Type II chicken collagen. I think that component should therefore be evaluated independently rather than assuming VeCollal replaces its specific immunological/joint effects.
More broadly, I think this would fit beautifully with Blueprint's experimental philosophy:
Don't use animal collagen because tradition says collagen has to come from animals. Test whether the physiological signal and substrates can be reproduced without the animal. If the biomarkers are equal or better, remove the unnecessary component.
It would also make Blueprint collagen accessible to vegans and others who currently cannot participate fully in the protocol while preserving the evidence-driven approach.
I would be very interested to see what your measurements show.
Best,
Nikolai Dragnes
Reference:
Lin Y-K et al. Oral supplementation of vegan collagen biomimetic has beneficial effects on human skin physiology: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Journal of Functional Foods 112 (2024), 105955. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05789368.