I saw an advertisement for Active Gold Collagen, and I realised I didn’t know what collagen means. My husband just laughed and said, ‘Horse hides,’ but this seemed unfair since the small print on the website of Boots (which sells it) said: ‘Does not contain porcine, bovine or other animal sources.’ I thought that odd, because the Oxford English Dictionary definition of collagen is: ‘A protein which is present in the form of fibres as a major constituent of bone, tendons, and other connective tissue and which yields gelatin on boiling and leather on tanning.’
So where did the makers get the collagen? Further down in the Boots small print it said: ‘This product contains hydrolysed collagen derived from fish.’ Is a fish not an animal? Active Gold Collagen’s own site says that the fish involved are ‘farmed tilapia and pangasius fish’.
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