Amino acid composition of three different types of land snails consumed in Nigeria

The amino acid concentration of three land snails, Limicolaria sp., Archatina archatina and Archachatina marginata, were evaluated. Amino acid results showed that the protein contained nutritionally useful quantities of most of the essential amino acids, including sulphur-containing amino acids. The total essential amino acids (TEAA) ranged from 361 to 45.0 mg/g crude protein (with histidine) while the TEAA without histidine ranged from 331 to 403 mg/g crude protein. Significant differences existed between essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids at P < 0.05 in A. archatina and A. marginata. The amino acid scores were greater than 1.0 in Lys and Phe + Tyr in all the snail samples while threonine was the limiting amino acid in all the samples. Percentage total neutral amino acids ranged from 53.2-62.0 mg/g crude protein; for total acidic amino acids, the range was 12.0-25.4 and for total basic amino acids the range was 18.8-26.0. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.