Zudem ist sie reich an Eiweiß und enthält Ballaststoffe, Kalium…
I’ve seen this many times with the meaning of proteins and I was wondering, do you use always use Eiweiß in singular in this way?
Because I would always say something like: “It’s rich in proteins…, it has many proteins…”.
I almost never use proteins in singular with food unless it’s specific.
I saw that in the dictionary is das Eiweiß, die Eiweiße.
Thanks.
I know this is a German question, and frankly for German I don’t know, but…
In the U.S. and typically when I see such a sentence, one typically says “It’s rich in protein”. I have a read a lot of nutrition and fitness books and articles over the year and that is the usage I’ve seen. Typically with such a sentence when one is talking about the protein content of a food. i.e. how many grams of protein.
The second part of your sentence…it has many proteins sounds fine to me. Here we are discussing individual proteins. Of course, in nutrition and fitness again, this feels a little awkward as most audiences, except for scientists probably don’t care about individual proteins (and in food I think it would be only one specific protein vs. say in bodily functions there may be various proteins doing this and that and have a different molecular set up). In a food sense, one might be more interested in the individual amino acids or something like that when it comes to protein.
Ah ok, thanks. So you say “rich in protein” but also with the plural meaning. Meaning that one food has many proteins but you also use the singular “rich in protein” format.
I’ve never paid attention to it because for me it’s always plural in those context.
If you want to say that meat has many proteins, you can also say: meat is rich in protein? Using the singular but meaning many different amino acids? Without being specific.
If it’s like that it would be probably the same in German.
When you say “meat has many proteins”, it sounds odd to me…it may be different in other languages. Like it has various protein molecules, but all the molecules are different “types” of protein. I’m not 100% positive, but I think a particular meat is just one type of protein molecule (i.e. same molecular structure). In contrast I might be able to say, the body has many different proteins doing various things. i.e. There is protein in your muscle, but also other proteins (I think different molecular structures) doing various bodily actions within us. Here I would use “proteins” because I’m speaking of various and different proteins.
Amino acids make up protein…or I should say Protein consists of various percentage of amino acide depending on the type of protein. i.e. Soy protein has a different amino acid profile than Pea Protein or “meat”.
So, in short, yes, If I was talking about the protein content of food in a quantitative manner I would say “it is rich in protein”. Used in the manner I’m saying here reflects this definition I found:
proteins collectively, especially as a dietary component.
I do not have as strong as a sense for countable versus uncountable nouns in German as in other languages, but I think I would describe food as having viel Eiweiß and not viele Eiweiße, unless I was talking about literally egg whites in a recipe or I was specifically talking about different types of proteins.
If you would ask Wie viel? then the answer would usually be singular. If it were Wie viele? then the answer will depend on if the answer is plural.
Hi,
in German the use of the plural of Eiweiß is rare.
To bake a cake I’d say Ich brauche drei Eiweiß/Eiklar.
When you look at a nutrition table of a random product you will find e.g. Produkt X enthält 100 g Kohlenhydrate (Pl.), 50 g Fett (Sg.) und 40 g Eiweiß (Sg.).
I’d say Ich möchte täglich 100 g Eiweiß zu mir nehmen. Dafür mache ich jeden Abend ein Omlett aus dem Eiweiß von 6 Eiern.
We use the word Protein too. But it is more used for fitness, “fitness food” and science. Here we use the plural! Ich muss unbedingt mehr Proteine zu mir nehmen. = Ich muss unbedingt mehr Einweiß zu mir nehmen.
Thanks Eric. This make me better understand your thinking process. It’s very useful.
Yeah! I haven’t even started to think about countable and uncountable. 
But learning get easier…
Danke schön Fer.weh
Thank you for the examples as well. They are definitely useful to read.