Okay, so we already know collagen's manifold benefits. But let's say we want to be obsessive and squeeze every last bit of power from the collagen you take. Doing this means we have to over-optimize every detail, including the following question: is it better to scoop collagen into your coffee coffee cup and then pour the coffee, or pour the coffee and then scoop the collagen in.

There's a problem with answering that question: you'll forget the answer in two seconds. At least I will. Confession: I take collagen almost every day (guess what brand I'm addicted to?) and it took me far too long -- 4 months, perhaps? -- before I remembered which it is. Into your coffee, scoop then pour, or pour then scoop?

Question: How do we make it easy, simple, and fun to remember?

Answer: With a fun acronym! Technically, actually, it’s “initialism” not an “acronym” since you don’t pronounce it: “CIA” is an “initialism” since you don’t say “see-ya” but “POTUS” is an “acronym” since you do pronounce it “poh-tus.” But we’ll ignore this technical distinction and use “acronym” for all to avoid esoteric confusion.

Side note: this applies not just to remember the order in which you put collagen into your hot coffee but to anything in life: acronyms are a memorization-nerd's best friend. Read any book on how those magicians are able to remember the first 314,159 digits of Pi for more details.

So, here's the acronym of the day to remember. When you're using bovine collagen, just remember this vivid image:

Beaming Cows Pick The Sod

Think of the cows beaming with happiness. (Amandean only sources our collagen from beaming-happy cows, by the way.) They're so happy they don't just eat the sod (aka, grass) -- but they’re so happy that they’ve become perfectionist cows so they don’t just eat any sod but they go around examining their terrain just to find the perfect grass to eat! Imagine each cow, sitting up, with a monocle, studying each blade of grass to first determine if it’s worth eating or not. Beaming cows pick the sod!

But this acronym stands for something else, as well. Let's take the B-C-P-T-S and see that it maps to:

Bovine Collagen: Pour, Then Scoop

Voilà! Done! Look at that. With your bovine collagen (We call ours “Collagen Peptides”--but same thing!), just think of the beaming cows swallowing the pasture, and there you have it: with bovine collagen, you pour then you scoop.

(Yes, repetition is another memorization technique which is why I repeated that point a few times.)

But... this leaves us with a problem. What if you don't take bovine collagen but marine collagen? Perhaps you're a pescatarian or perhaps it's what your physician happens to prefer.

Well, to every problem, there's a solution, and thus... well, I misled you when I said that the above acronym was the acronym of the day. Because it's really just one of the two acronyms of the day! The other, ladies and gentlemen, is....

Many Cod Swim The Pond

Just picture that image: A codfish, and he’s swimming and swimming all around the pond in an endless circle. Then what does it do? He circles back and he swims the pond again! And what is he listening to while he swims the pond? Of course, swimming to best-song-in-the-entire-history-of-music-even-better-than-that-Mozart-imposter, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here with its penultimate words, “we’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year.” So, just picture this image: many cod swimming the pond.

In fact, the Atlantic Ocean between the UK and the USA is often called the “Pond” so maybe we think of the many cod, like Pink Floyd’s music itself, going back and forth on both sides of the Pond, that is, the Atlantic, growing their music on both sides of the Anglosphere.

Note to self: another great memorization trick is to think of a vivid, extreme, even weird or bizarre image. It sticks in your mind. This always works. Colorful metaphors will be remembered, while bland ones forgotten. I didn't invent that, some ancient Greek guy - Pythagoras perhaps? - did. If only he had a colorful metaphor for his own name, I would remember it! Those ancient Greeks, they should practice what they preach!

But you're smart enough to see where I'm going with this. This great image, of many cod paddling to swim, maps to another useful phrase, which is...

Marine Collagen: Scoop, Then Pour

Yup, there you go: with marine collagen, you scoop and then you pour.

You might be wondering, at this point, the big “why?” Collagen is collagen, so why is there this difference? The devil is in the details: marine collagen contains smaller particles, which means it’s more bioavailable (in other words, proportionally more of it is absorbed into your body effectively - so you get more bang for your buck!). But as a consequence of that, because the smaller size leads to the greater bioavailability, because that makes hot liquids like coffee dissolve it more quickly. Now compare that to bovine collagen: with slightly larger sized peptides, it dissolves more slowly in a hot liquid, which means that it’s better to put it in afterward and stir it.

(And in case this leads you to wonder, which one to choose -- I’d say that their slightly different properties make it helpful to have both, so you may want to alternate daily between each; or if you have dietary preferences like you’re a pescatarian or only eat particular beef, or if you prefer beef paleolithicly to anything else - then it may make sense to choose the one best for your diet.)

So, I’ll bet you'll never forget these again. I’ll only bet a very little bit, but I’ll bet. At least I won't. And for these great acronyms, I need to give a shout-out to Bertha Lang, my childhood piano teacher from, well, when I was a little kid and, statistically speaking, you, dear reader, probably weren't born yet. She ingrained in me acronyms like "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" (an acronym that only now, upon writing these words out decades later, do I remember is probably a euphemism that the wild, savage musicians like Mozart probably didn't use but instead slight variations consistent with their dispositions, translated of course). If it weren't for you, Mrs. Lang, the world wouldn't have these two great collagen acronyms to use now. Great big dogs do fight animals and all cars do eat gas, indeed. Perhaps they do so while confronting their same old fears, year after year: wish you were here. (Cue the classic riff here. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, shame on you for being much younger than me!)