why 20 grams, when most collagen drinks hold under 10

I have spent an unreasonable amount of time in the beverage aisle turning cans around, and the gap between the front of a collagen drink and the back of it is usually enormous.

Collagen in large friendly letters on the front. On the back, one gram. Sometimes less. Enough to legally print the word, nowhere near enough to be the reason you are drinking it.

what the trials actually dosed

Go through the studies that found something and the doses cluster in a clear band.

The Proksch skin trials used 2.5 to 5 grams daily. The Hexsel nail study used 2.5 grams over 24 weeks. Zdzieblik used 5 grams for knee discomfort. Clark used 10 grams a day for 24 weeks in athletes with joint pain. Work on tendon and connective tissue has gone to 15 grams and above.

Every one of those is a real amount, taken every day, for months. That is the shape of the evidence, and it is the shape we designed our can around.

why we went to the top of the range

Two reasons.

The first is that trials happen in ideal conditions. Participants are supervised, reminded, and measured. Real life is a school run and a work trip and a week where you forget. We would rather the days you do drink it comfortably clear the range that has been studied, so that a real and imperfect habit still adds up to something.

The second is that the collagen should be the point of the drink, not a garnish on it. If you are going to buy a can, the can should be doing the work. Twenty grams means it is.

Ours is 20 grams of collagen protein, from 22 grams of grass fed hydrolysed bovine collagen peptides. Two numbers, because peptides are not one hundred percent protein by weight and we would rather show you both than round in our favour.

it is doing a different job to your protein shake

Worth being clear about this, because people ask. Collagen is not competing with whey or eggs. Those are your muscle proteins and they are good at that job.

Collagen is a structural protein. It is what your skin, tendons, cartilage, bones and blood vessels are built out of, and it delivers glycine, proline and hydroxyproline in a ratio you will not get from any other food. Different material, different job, sitting alongside the rest of what you eat rather than replacing it.

the honest thing about how long it takes

Every trial in this piece ran eight weeks at minimum, and most ran twelve to twenty four. Collagen is a building project, not a stimulant. It works the way going to the gym works, which is to say gradually and then noticeably.

So the real question is not which collagen has the best formula. It is which one you will still be drinking in March.

That is the entire design brief for LÉS. Twenty grams, ninety calories, one gram of sugar with nothing added, no caffeine, cold and lightly sparkling, in a can you actually want to open. The best version of this is the one you keep going with, and everything about how we built it follows from that.

the research i leaned on

• Proksch E, Segger D, Degwert J, et al. Oral supplementation of specific collagen peptides has beneficial effects on human skin physiology. Skin Pharmacology and Physiology. 2014;27(1):47-55.
• Zdzieblik D, Oesser S, Gollhofer A, König D. Improvement of activity-related knee joint discomfort following supplementation of specific collagen peptides. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 2017;42(6):588-595.
• Clark KL, Sebastianelli W, Flechsenhar KR, et al. 24-week study on the use of collagen hydrolysate as a dietary supplement in athletes with activity-related joint pain. Current Medical Research and Opinion. 2008;24(5):1485-1496.
• Hexsel D, Zague V, Schunck M, et al. Oral supplementation with specific bioactive collagen peptides improves nail growth and reduces symptoms of brittle nails. Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. 2017;16(4):520-526.

LÉS is a beverage, not medicine, and nothing here is medical advice.