The internet is rife with information, testimonials, stories, advice and nearly every other form of communication on food and eating. The messages are generally directed to optimizing eating in support of activities like strength training, nutrition, emotion, and weight loss.
I find that a lot of high quality information on nutrition and food choices is available on the web. However, I have yet to come across a succinct analysis of protein density and protein cost, two related topics that interest me.
To fill that gap, I did a simple analysis of the protein-rich foods that are part of my diet. Then I wrote this post to memorialize what I learned.
So let’s get into it, starting with some background information.
Background
In my experience, developing a strong foundation of nutrition basics is a key to efficiently learning more from the myriad, relatively unfiltered sources available on the internet.
For a general audience just starting out on this topic, I recommend books by highly accomplished and respected researchers, such as Walter Willett and his book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy. Walt is a world-renowned nutritional epidemiologist and he facilitated the dietary exposure assessment portion of my doctoral research; I remain grateful for his support. Another informative dive into the science for general audiences is Episode #97 of the Huberman Lab podcast, a popular show available wherever you get your podcasts. For more on the science of nutrition and ways to study relationships between diet and health, I recommend Walt’s text book entitled Nutritional Epidemiology.
In addition to reading, it turns out that advice from knowledgeable people in 3-D can be especially effective at distilling what is nearly a universe of nutrition information. That’s my experience at least. My doctor is someone I talk with about my diet.
You might also find it useful to talk with a person who is trained and experienced in nutrition and wellness. An expert like that might be available via a referral from your healthcare provider or at your local gym. I receive tremendous advice, support, encouragement, and positive reinforcement from Dylan Gutheil, co-owner of Flight Performance and Fitness in Newton, MA. Thank you Dylan!
Even then, who’s to know if the guidance you find or receive will fit with your own likes, dislikes, and habits enough to be actionable. I think there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach to any of the various diet-related outcomes that people aim to reach. However, I can tell you the mix of eating and activity that helped me lose extra weight and and hold steady at a target weight for over a year.
My macronutrient targets
What works for me as targets for macronutrient composition is:
- About 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram body weight.
- About 1.9 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram body weight.
- About 0.7 grams of fat per kilogram body weight.
My activity targets
In addition to striving to hit those consumption rates for macronutrients, I target at least 7000 steps and 350 calories of exercise per day, the latter includes the walking.
Walking
Walking with our family dog is an essential part of attaining my steps goal. We walk an average of about 2 miles a day together; roughly 1,800 steps. Indy sniffs and marks as many trees and sign posts as possible along the way, while I listen to books or podcasts or make work or personal calls. That walking, plus doing things around home, working, and errands usually get me to the steps goal. Household cleaning and organizing can take my steps to a whole other level.
Other activities
While walking is a regular part of my routine, it is not enough to reach my target calorie burn. To address the deficit, I try to exercise 5 or 6 days a week. That has been challenging to schedule, but I’ve found ways to make it work. Mornings before the rest of the household rises is consistently a good time as long as I get to bed early. Nights work for me too, especially so after I cut out drinking more than a year ago. My go to activities are: jogging slowly when it’s not too cold outside, HIIT and/or lifting medium weights at home or the gym, tennis when I can get hitting partner(s), and swimming when I have access to a pool.
What the targets mean for my habits
In terms of calories, the macronutrient target rates above translate to an average of about 2000 calories per day for me. I aim for roughly 33% of that food energy to come from protein. That protein target is more than double my previous protein intake. Adopting a new eating style took some effort, mostly concentration.
I did four things to support the new eating profile. The first was to learn about the macronutrient composition of foods that I was already eating and of new foods that I would consider adding. Two, I added several protein-rich foods into my regular fare. Three, I cut out much of the junk food I remain fond of. And four, along the way I stopped drinking alcohol which made space for fruits.
That background may help explain the subset of foods included in this analysis. Now, let’s move on to the density and costs of protein in foods that I like to eat, all of which are common foods.
Protein-rich foods
I leave it to others to explain why a good target for protein intake is in the range of 1.6 g/kg, but I do want to share information I’ve gathered that may be useful to readers who seek to boost the amount of protein in their diet. In particular, I am going to share the foods that I found to be dense in protein and enjoyable to my taste palette.
I started by downloading several weeks of daily logs from the food log and nutrition app I use called Lose It. I filtered the data for the protein rich foods that I enjoy eating, calculated the protein density of each food, and also the cost of protein for each food.
Let’s start with protein density.
Protein density
I calculated protein density for each food as the ratio of the calories of protein in the the food to the total calories in the food. I expressed the ratio as a percentage. Consider hummus for example and Cedar’s original flavor hummus in particular. By my calculation, the protein density of this food is 19%. In other words, 19% of the calories in hummus are from protein. For the record, fat represents about 50% of the calories in hummus and carbohydrates account for the remaining roughly 30%.
A table of protein density for 41 protein-rich foods that I enjoy eating is below. Some low protein density foods are included for purposes of comparison. The protein density on a caloric basis ranges from a low of 13% for Oatly low-fat oat milk to a high of 100% for cod. The second highest entry after cod is shrimp at 97% followed by tuna at 91%. The next group is whey protein powder, egg whites, and deli turkey breast, all at roughly 80%. The following group of foods has protein density from 70% to 78% and includes halibut, scallops, chicken breast, canned tuna, and Friendship 1% whipped cottage cheese.
| Food Item | Food Type | % Calories from Protein | % Calories from Fat | % Calories from Carbohydrates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cod | Fish | 100.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Shrimp | Fish | 97.2% | 2.7% | 0.8% |
| Tuna, ahi | Fish | 90.9% | 4.1% | 0.0% |
| Protein powder, whey | Supplement | 80.0% | 11.3% | 10.0% |
| Egg whites | Egg | 80.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Turkey, deli | Meat | 79.5% | 9.0% | 7.9% |
| Halibut | Fish | 76.4% | 19.0% | 0.0% |
| Scallops | Fish | 76.3% | 9.0% | 12.0% |
| Chicken breast, whole | Meat | 75.3% | 21.7% | 0.0% |
| Canned tuna, in water | Fish | 73.9% | 20.9% | 0.0% |
| Friendship whip’d cottage ch, 1% | Dairy | 73.6% | 15.0% | 18.4% |
| Salmon | Fish | 68.7% | 26.7% | 0.0% |
| Seitan | Supplement | 68.0% | 4.5% | 20.0% |
| Protein powder, pea | Supplement | 67.7% | 17.3% | 15.4% |
| Fairlife LF NF milk | Dairy | 65.0% | 0.0% | 30.0% |
| Yellowtail | Fish | 63.1% | 32.0% | 0.0% |
| Corepower 26g | Supplement | 61.2% | 23.8% | 18.8% |
| Lowfat cottage cheese | Dairy | 60.3% | 18.1% | 20.3% |
| Siggi’s 0% vanilla | Dairy | 60.0% | 0.0% | 43.4% |
| Two good yogurt | Dairy | 60.0% | 22.5% | 15.0% |
| Ham, deli | Meat | 55.6% | 40.1% | 0.0% |
| Oikos, triple zero | Dairy | 50.0% | 0.0% | 46.7% |
| Spinach | Vegetable | 49.1% | 14.8% | 62.3% |
| Turkey sausage | Meat | 44.0% | 63.0% | 4.0% |
| TJs Greek yogurt nonfat | Dairy | 43.3% | 0.0% | 56.7% |
| Barebell bar | Supplement | 40.4% | 31.8% | 32.3% |
| Chicken thighs, whole | Meat | 40.3% | 56.6% | 0.0% |
| Lox | Fish | 40.0% | 55.4% | 0.0% |
| Nonfat milk | Dairy | 37.5% | 0.0% | 56.3% |
| Tofu | Legume | 36.9% | 34.6% | 40.0% |
| Steak, ribeye | Meat | 32.7% | 66.8% | 0.0% |
| Cheese, gruyere | Dairy | 28.8% | 70.4% | 3.6% |
| Cheese, swiss | Dairy | 28.2% | 65.5% | 5.7% |
| Bacon | Meat | 27.3% | 69.1% | 1.1% |
| Cheese, cheddar | Dairy | 26.7% | 74.2% | 1.3% |
| Salad | Vegetable | 24.0% | 18.0% | 72.0% |
| Espresso | Legume | 23.2% | 77.4% | 0.0% |
| Hummus | Legume | 19.2% | 52.6% | 34.8% |
| Granola, Kind PB | Grain | 19.0% | 25.7% | 55.2% |
| Dave’s killer bread | Grain | 17.1% | 25.7% | 74.3% |
| Oatly, low fat | Grain | 13.0% | 9.8% | 69.6% |
What’s the take away so far? Cod, shrimp, egg whites, other white fish, chicken breast, canned tuna, and whipped cottage cheese deliver the highest amount of protein per calorie of food, at least among the items I like to eat. Whey protein powder is right up there too if mixed with water.
Of the dairy products other than whipped cottage cheese, cheeses fell into the middle or lower half of the pack at roughly 25% – 30% protein on a calorie basis. At 37% protein, ribeye steak is moderately more protein dense than many cheeses.
Not surprisingly, carb-heavy vegetables and grains were at the low end of the list. Granola is one of my favorite foods and I usually have it with blueberries or other fruit several days a week, despite its relatively low protein density. Similarly, I love a sandwich and regularly eat a couple slices of Dave’s killer bread, also at the low end of the list.
The last group I want to comment on is foods that are protein supplements. Six of these items are on the list.
- Protein from whey and protein are the 4th and 14th most protein dense foods on the list at 80% and 68%, respectively. If mixed with water, those percentages hold for a serving of these supplements, but otherwise will be lower in practice.
- Seitan, made from wheat gluten and consisting of 68% protein by calories is nearly as protein-rich as chicken and canned tuna fish. I find that density quite remarkable for a plant product, but definitely a food to be avoided by anyone with celiac disease or allergy to gluten.
- Corepower 26 gram protein drinks from Fairlife come in at a protein density of 61% and lactose free, nonfat milk, also from Fairlife, has a highly respectable protein density of 65%.
- Barebell protein bars have a protein density of 40%, lower than I expected before beginning this analysis but better than suggested by the New York Times story of January 12, 2023 that depicted protein bars as little more than glorified candy bars; that “gotcha” piece fell flat for this reader.
To get a better sense of the data, I plotted the calorie percentages of protein, fat, and carbohydrates on a chart with three axes. This type of visualization is called a ternary scatter plot. The highest protein density foods are in the lower left corner of the triangle. For those foods, you can see that protein accounts for at least 60% of their total calories. The way you can tell is that each black circle is to the left of the blue dotted line that starts at the tick mark labeled 60% on the blue axis and from there runs diagonally down and to the right; the blue axis is percent of calories from protein. Naturally, the circles in the lower left corner correspond to the foods in the top dozen rows or so of the table above. Not surprisingly, calories of the other foods are predominantly from fats or carbohydrates.
Protein Cost
I calculated the cost of protein in each food as well. Here, I relied upon the same protein content for foods as above and combined that information with the approximate price of that food item. For prices, I referred to grocery shopping I did the weekend of February 4 – 5, 2023 at Star Market, Wegmans, and Trader Joe’s in metro Boston.
To make the calculation, I divided the cost in dollars of a serving of each food by the grams of protein in that serving. The numbers that result from that calculation are dollars per gram of protein for each food.
As you will see below, I use those units for tables and charts, but in the narrative I typically refer to protein cost in terms of cents per gram of protein. I do that because: (1) I think dollars per gram reads better in the tables and charts and (2) cents per gram is more intuitive for me when talking about these costs.
A plot of protein cost effectiveness for 41 protein-rich foods that I enjoy eating is below. The cost of protein ranges from a low of about 4 cents per gram for boneless chicken breast to more than 50 cents per gram for vegetables like spinach as well as oat milk and espresso, which admittedly are low in protein density. Other foods that rank high in protein cost effectiveness are whey protein powder, cottage cheese, nonfat milk, chicken thighs, and canned tuna.
Various brands and sizes of yogurt come in at around 10 cents per gram of protein, about double the cost of protein from chicken. Shrimp has about the same cost-effectiveness as the yogurts.
Fresh fish and scallops, at 12 to 23 cents per gram of protein, are a more expensive source of protein than chicken, canned tuna, yogurt, and shrimp. In fact, fresh fish are some of the least cost-effective of the high density protein foods I like to eat. Lox is even more expensive at higher than 30 cents per gram; I will be striking that tasty food from my rotation.
The cost effectiveness of protein supplements is surprising to me. Whey protein and pea protein are actually among the most cost effective, landing at 5 to 8 cents per gram. On the other hand, the protein bars I like the most, Barebell brand, are 3-fold to 5-fold more expensive per unit of protein than the animal and plant protein powders. Corepower protein drinks, which I like as well, are about 17 cents per gram of protein when bought by the case at Wegmans, which makes them a mid-range cost-effectiveness source of protein.
A final observation is that two of the lowest cost sources of protein are nearly polar opposites in terms of their gross composition. One is the breast muscle from a whole living animal, a chicken, and the other is a highly processed collection of like molecules extracted from milk or a plant. The price coincidence is happenstance surely, but perhaps somewhat ironic.
Cross tab of protein density and cost
Anyone who read this far probably has the same question I did at this point in the analysis:
What foods have both high protein density and low cost per amount of protein?
To answer this question, I plotted protein density against protein cost. The results are shown in the chart below. Foods in the lower right corner are relatively protein-rich and the protein they contain is relatively inexpensive.
Consider for example, foods for which at least 50% of the calories are protein and each gram of protein costs less than approximately 10 cents. For me, that group contains many tasty foods like shrimp, tuna steaks, chicken breast, cottage cheese, and nonfat yogurts. Supplementation with whey or pea protein powder delivers essentially the same value as those whole foods.
If spending more on protein is an option, then other fish like cod, halibut, and salmon can be on the menu, as can sliced turkey from the deli, like the Primo or Boar’s Head brands that are commonplace in New England.
This chart also makes me feel good about relying upon Corepower protein drinks as a nutrition supplement; reasonably high protein density and not an exorbitant price. On the other hand, these data lead me to lose interest in Barebell protein bars because while tasty and a quick pulse of protein, they are about 50% more expensive per gram of protein than Corepower drinks and 5-fold more costly than protein powder.
Steak is competitive for protein price-wise, but gives up a lot to fish and white meat in terms of protein density.
Wrap Up
So there you have it – the Salm summary of protein density and cost. The idea of this analysis has been in my mind for many months, so I’m glad to have it out of my system. More importantly though, I learned some things from the analysis and confirmed some prior assumptions.
Becoming more aware of foods that pack a protein punch and their cost is knowledge that helps me strike a balance between foods that I enjoy, amounts of foods I like to eat, what my family spends on food, and feeling better physically; nearly all subjective outcomes for sure, but like you probably, I generally know it when I feel it.
May others find this information helpful too.
Post Disclaimer
The information contained in this post is general in nature and is not offered and cannot be considered as an opinion for any particular situation. The author has provided the links referenced above for information purposes only and by doing so, does adopt or incorporate the contents. Statements in this post are solely those of the author unless otherwise indicated.
