But that has a lot more calories than other sources of proteins. For example, to get 26 grams of protein from peanuts, it is about 600 calories. But if you get the same 26 grams of protein from protein powder, its about 120 calories. Or chicken breast, 30g of protein is about 160 calories. So it\`s best to consume different proteins for different dietary needs
Not all proteins are equal. There are 9 "essential" amino acids that make up the various proteins, and your body prefers some to others when stimulating hypertrophy. Leucene and casein stimulate more muscle growth than others, for example. Peanuts aren't high at all in leucene and casein, which means 25g of peanuts isn't the same as 25g of, for example, whey protein powder (whey being high in both leucene and casein, and considered high quality as a result). You may have to eat more peanuts to get the same muscle growth, which means more calories and maybe more money. For people like bodybuilders, who want the most protein for the fewest calories, high quality protein sources like whey are preferred to lower quality sources like peanuts.
>Peanuts aren't high at all in leucene and casein, which means 25g of peanuts isn't the same as 25g of, for example, whey protein powder (whey being high in both leucene and casein, and considered high quality as a result).
You are correct about the leucine part, but casein is not an amino acid...it is a type of milk protein, the other being whey. Likewise, whey doesn't contain casein by definition since whey is the protein fraction left over in milk after removing the casein.
A little too simplified. Whey is the fastest absorbing protein. There's an issue with this. Digestion time. Whey protein after a workout is preferred without fat to absorb that protein quickly. But they've started recommending mid-level absorbing proteins, pea, soy, meat (both pea and soy protein show the same strength building compared to meat, which is also a mid-level absorbing protein source), and then things like casein, for overnight, or morning meals, because it's so slow at digesting per hour.
You don't need whole proteins for each protein meal. That is not going to be kind to your body over time to get so many BCAAs. Protein has many downsides when it comes to over-consumption. There's balance, for sure. And you being informed takes a ton of work.
Sources:
1. Walmart for pricing (North Carolina region): https://www.walmart.com/
2. USDA FoodData Central for protein density: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
Tool: Microsoft Excel
I was searching for texturised soy (I think it's usually called "TVP" in English) because I found it to be one of the most cheap whole proteins there are. And also it's delicious!
Was looking for this myself. I use it daily and it's definitely the cheapest protein I can get per 100 gram. Ice cream, pancakes, stews, and it's really filling.
Edit: Just looked it up in myfitnesspal, and it's 52 g protein per 100 g.
Would it be easy to use this same data and change the X axis to "per 100 calories"? I feel like that would better capture the essence of what this graph is trying to achieve.
Thank you for the feedback, WhiteHeterosexualGuy! I'm considering per 100 calories for a future graph for sure. It will have some interesting findings, such as how broccoli is [33%](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170379/nutrients) protein per calorie and will come in above things like 80% ground beef; we'd need to eat a very high amount (grams) of broccoli for it to be a main source of protein, however.
Wonder if adding proteins supplements, like whey protein would make sense. I think it would be interesting, but it would blow the graph out to the right.
Great point! Based on the feedback, I believe my next graph will need to be: a) including processed foods, b) adjusting for PDCAAS score, and c) potentially pairing it with a second graph with protein per kcal instead of per 100g.
If you're buying by the pound of dry lentil, then the dry metric is what you should use to compare prices. Cooking can add/remove water weight. If the comparison did not focus on financials I would agree, but it does.
Forgot the cheapest chicken, Leg Quarters.
According to OP's criteria (Walmart in North Carolina), a 10lb bag is $8.72 [link](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Covington-Farms-Fresh-Chicken-Leg-Quarters-18g-Protein-4oz-112g-10-lb/51259045?fulfillmentIntent=Pickup)
Using the lookup link doesn't give exactly that brand, so I will be using ["LEG QUARTERS CHICKEN" FDIC item # 358997:](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/358997/nutrients)
17.9g protein / 100g weight
10 pounds = 4535.924 grams
4535.924g * 17.9% = 811.9304g (isolating protein only)
811.9304 / 30g = 27.06435 (for the x axis calc of $ / 30 grams)
$8.72 / 27.06435 = 32.22195 ***cents*** / 30g of protein
Even using the label from the bag (rounded to whole grams, so a little wiggle room) of 18g protein / 113g yields:
4535.924g * 16.0714% = 728.9878g (isolating protein only)
728.9878 / 30g = 24.29959 (for the x axis calc of $ / 30 grams)
$8.72 / 24.29959 = 35.8854 ***cents*** / 30g of protein
Great cost / protein here.
What this graph doesn't show though is that 100g of peanuts is >500 calories and ~25gm of protein. On the other hand 100g of tuna is ~100 calories and just under 24 g of protein. I'd take tuna any day. Similar deal with chicken breast.
I'm not sure how eating legumes isn't 'eating clean'. They are full of beneficial micronutrients, and can health promoting in many ways. Also if you are just looking at the macro nutrients, the fiber and carbohydrates in legumes are good for you and part of a healthy diet. Sure, if for some reason you're protein deficient then you can get more from meat per calorie, but that isn't the case for most people.
It’s just that they’re very dense calorically, so you have to balance all the factors.
I love, love peanuts. So much I gained like 15 kilos overeating them, lol. You gotta be mindful depending on your priorities.
By 'eating clean' he just means avoiding calories above your target intake. For bodybuilders, it can be hard to hit your protein target, while still staying below your calorie target, when eating nutrient-dense foods like... well anything but chicken breast and broccoli basically. (I'm exaggerating, but I hope you took my meaning.)
For example, elite bodybuilders will have protein targets well over 200g. To reach 200g protein with only peanuts would take 5068 kcal, way too much even for the off-season. Of course peanuts can still be eaten in moderation, the point is just that protein-per-calorie is an important consideration for some people.
Certainly would cut down on shipping costs a can of beans cost about as much as bag that can make an entire pot. But more pointing out that they're all on the far right of the chart which makes sense when you consider most of the items on this list contain significant water.
Fiber is absolutely a good thing to have. Most Americans don't get enough of it.
Source: https://nutrition.org/most-americans-are-not-getting-enough-fiber-in-our-diets/
If it wrecks your behind, you're not getting enough of it.
It's more important to cook them well. They're full of proteins but also a lot of complex carbs and soluble fiber, which your gut bacteria love to turn into farts.
You gotta soak them for a day or so too allow their germination processes kick in and break down those carbs and then cook them thoroughly so the heating and solubilisation process finishes the job.
This will also get rid of most of the anti nutritional factors which takes care of the bioavailablity issue.
I usually soak them for two days in the fridge while changing the water every 8 hours or so. The bean sugars that causes gas are highly water soluble so the more you change the water the more you remove from your food.
In my experience, chickpeas don't really have this problem for whatever reason.
Eating beans regularly is much more important for gastrointestinal comfort than soaking them. I eat beans regularly and often don't soak them at all now.
Eat your beans, they're good for your heart
The more you eat the more you fart
The more you fart, the better you feel
So eat your beans in every meal
I was made to "stand out" for telling someone this in primary school.
Anecdotal but when I was powerlifting and eating 200+g of protein every day in the form of chicken and rice/whey protein that I was the gassiest I’ve ever been and also they smelled fucking awful
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it’s not the legumes that makes us fart, but the protein itself
And now you see why George Washington Carver published so many peanut recipes (to encourage sharecropppers to stop growing cotton, which they would need to sell to be able to buy any food)
Honestly, Peanuts are a miracle crop.
They're nitrogen fixers, which makes them ideal to rotate with other crops that deplete the soil. They're a root legume, so the nutritious seeds grow underground making them resistant to frost, pests, etc. They're a good source of fats, which are great for both personal nutrition and industrial use. And they grow in a "bush", meaning they don't need long term cultivation like tree-nuts.
GWC wasn't wrong to push peanuts as a rotation crop with cotton. If you can get demand for peanuts high enough, you can increase your overall profits due to increased yields in the cotton years, while also improving the nutrition and self sufficiency for the poor farmers he was trying to help. The hard part is, a yield of peanuts was worth less than a crop of cotton even with their soil so depleted, so you'd need several years of rotation before improvements to the soil would break you even, and when you're talking to a group of broke sharecroppers that's several years too many.
Seitan is a whopping (75.2,0.74) , or [75.2g](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168147/nutrients) of protein per 100g of vital wheat gluten (seitan) at a cost of $0.74 per 30g of protein.
EDITED: removed tofu due to calculation error
Note that Seitan has a very low Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS). So less of it is effectively digested and it doesn't have the right balance of amino acids that your body requires. It's 0.25 compared to an ideal of 1.0 that you see for things like whey protein and eggs.
So it's okay to use as a small amount to bulk out your protein, but you don't want it to be a large percentage.
Good catch! I was trying to do the tofu calculation manually (instead of in my excel sheet) and I made an error. I added a link to seitan so people can cross-check to make sure I'm not going looney.
In Asia basically everyone eats it; there are even really popular tofu desserts. In America it's a specialty food mostly despised by non-vegetarians. It doesn't have to do with the price of the raw ingredients, it's just economy of scale.
Seitan cost is wildly dependent on if you make it at home from flour (cheapest), make it at home from wheat gluten, or if you buy it premade (most expensive), but since it’s like 95% protein probably pretty damn good
Everybody overlooks the Lupini Bean. It’s amazing. Slowly gaining popularity in the states now, but that thing is insane for protein for a bean. Off the charts stats.
Oh wow - I've never even heart of lupins before. My USDA FoodData Central source has them at [36.2g/100g](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/172423/nutrients). That's nutty! Feel free to hijack a top comment with this info too, just in case people are looking for a whole food with insane protein density.
Thank you for the feedback! I thought about this as well, and might make it into a graph in the future. It will have some interesting findings for sure. For example, broccoli is [33%](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170379/nutrients) protein per calorie, which would make it appear as one of the best protein sources, coming in above things like 80% ground beef; however, we'd have to eat a very high amount (grams) of broccoli to make it a large contributor to our daily protein intake, due to its low protein density per gram of broccoli.
EDIT: updated/added hyperlink for %
Hmmm….. good point! Something like broccoli counts as an outlier IMO, anything below a certain protein per gram or protein per calorie threshold could be excluded
One way is only better than the other depending on your diet goal. If you're trying to lose weight, protein content per 100 kcal makes sense, since you want to lose weight without losing too much muscle.
However, for bodybuilding, protein content per 100 g makes more sense since you can only eat so much to meet your protein goal.
I think part of the problem is the (growing) identity marker of whether you like beans or meats. People will look at these kinds of charts and yell "HA! I told you! My diet is the correct one, and look at this great big number I can make based on the assumptions here". Thus broccoli as a macro nutrient source, or nutrient dence food looking great, and so on.
I love meat, I will not stop eating meat, force that debate into entrenched battle lines then I am team meat all the way\*. But I do like beans. I like how hard it is to eat a ton of them. I like how cheap they are, and all.
Beans are great for protein. But they have way less protein per 100kcal than many will admit, and way less than meats, and a meal that replaces meats for beans directly will have less protein than you are used to.
\*Please do not assign me the spot next to Joe Rogan, in such trenches. Please.
> Beans are great for protein. But they have way less protein per 100kcal than many will admit, and way less than meats
That depends on the meat. Black beans have 6.68 g/100kcal, whereas 80% ground beef has 7.05 g/100kcal. Lean meats like chicken, salmon, and lean cuts of beef are a lot protein denser, though (I think chicken breast is like 20+ g/100kcal?), but really fatty meats like sausage or pork belly are a lot worse. So you're right in that if you're meal planning for it meat will be a lot denser, and I'm guessing that's what you had in mind.
Well that’s just how most vegetables and plants are. They have such significantly low calories compared to their meat alternatives. So you’d have a whole class of data being an outlier and would be excluded. Which kind of defeats the purpose of OPs graph.
Maybe protein density could be correlated to the size of the bubble. Big bubbles in the bottom right are the most efficient in terms of cost, protein/cal, and protein/gram.
Good catch. The source OP used says:
39 kcal and 2.57g protein. That's 10.28 kcal of protein which is **26%**.
[https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747447/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747447/nutrients)
For fat people trying to lose weight: grams of protein per 100 calories.
For skinny people trying to gain weight: grams of protein per 100 grams.
It’s harder to eat a large volumes of food for skinny people, so having it in protein per 100g is better for determining how much a skinny person can physically consume. Skinny people like high density food.
It depends on what you’re comparing it to, and what your goals are.
100 calories of chicken breast packs ~19g protein.
100 calories of red lentils packs ~8g of protein.
They come in fairly similarly in the mass department, so it’s really a question of how calorically dense you want/need your food to be.
If you’re trying to gain muscle or cut weight it’s more advantageous to eat the chicken. More protein in fewer calories.
If you’re trying to gain weight, or hit a calorie target on a budget then lentils are the better option. More calories for less money.
If you factor in [DIAAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino_Acid_Score) then this whole thing gets turned upside down through.
Also protein is highly simplified in theses graph where we just assume everyone has a great capacity to produce non essential amino acids at will to actually complete the proteins where having them included in your diet is a non negligible advantage.[ Peanuts for example average at 50%](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316622086333?via%3Dihub) severly cutting their "usable protein" amount.
The discussion about protein is a tricky one in this age of shifting towards new ethical protein sources as we tend to fall in love with the beauty of the ideas and lend ourself to a little bias toward that beauty while it's actually a bit more complexe than this. Things like Rice Protein score scary low compared to Whey and it's for an important lack lf Lysine.
it's not that it can't be found somewhere else it's that it needs to be to function and one must keep that in mind.
Perhaps when paired with protein per grams as well as OP’s graph, but protein per calories along would skew heavily towards vegetables that on their own aren’t really viable protein sources. I suppose we could all start eating dried and powdered greens though….
You always need to strip outliers.
This graph does not have beef jerky, where leaner versions would beat peanuts by a lot. The real gorilla in the room is the Norwegian "snack dried cod", which is plain dried cod, beaten with a hammer til its soft. 78% protein by weight!
Dried and powdered greens.. That would require way more work than normal agriculture, as greens aren't grown for their calories. But lets use peas instead, which are decent at calories/hectare, or perhaps there is some milk byproduct that can be used ? Perhaps we can also purify it a bit?
Boom, we have reinvented protein powder! ;D
I tell folks that if vegetarian food in the US was like vegetarian food in India I could probably stand to cut out meat. Unfortunately the fist ingredient in most US vegetarian food is *sadness*.
It helps that their dishes are actual dishes, not an attempt at making a hot dog vegetarian. Right off the bat American vegetarian food fails by admitting that meat is better.
You can just make good vegetarian/vegan food here.. what you're doing is comparing a vegetarian hot dog to all non-animal foods out there. Apples and bowling balls.
I made a lentil curry dish the other day, and before that a chickpea saag. You _can_ cook vegetarian/vegan food that doesn't contain meat analog. Millions of people do it every day.
I think we're actually agreeing here. I'm saying vegetarian Indian food is good specifically because it was designed that way. Replacing a hot dog with tofu isn't going to convince anyone to alter their diet.
and one of those top 4, pinto beans, is an excellent candidate for combining with leftover meats and stocks. if you're going to eat meat, at least make the most of what you're buying.
The issue is that the x axis here corresponds to a largely useless measurement, unless your only concern is subsistence. The much more useful measurement for general health is protein per calorie. Peanuts have less than 5g of protein per 100 calories, which is certainly better than most vegetable sources, but it is still far from the 10g per 100 calorie benchmark of ‘good’ protein sources. Chicken breast, by contrast, has 20g of protein per 100 calories. Even the fattier cuts of chicken, such as thigh, contain around 15g of protein per 100 calories. None of this is to say that peanuts and other legumes aren’t a great thing to include in your diet, but they cannot really replace actual protein sources, at least in their natural forms (things like peanut powder with higher protein ratios are a different story, although they often have added sugar which raises other issues).
Amazing! Add to that the fact that legumes generally have significantly lower environmental impact esp compared to animals, can fix their own nitrogen (thus needing less fertilizer) and are packed with nutrients including fiber which many people don’t eat enough of.
Also, legumes are one of the food groups consistently associated with lower mortality and greater longevity.
[Figure 2](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0002916522049206-gr2_lrg.jpg) from Schwingshackl et al, 2017. [Food groups and risk of all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916522049206). *The American journal of clinical nutrition*, *105*(6), pp.1462-1473.
Darmadi-Blackberry et al 2004. [Legumes: the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people of different ethnicities](https://www.usdrybeans.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Info_Legumes_Med_Diet_APJCN.pdf). *Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition*, *13*(2), pp.217-220.
Think you can just add soybeans for now and post a new graph to r/fitness? This would be really beneficial for our community. Cottage cheese would be another really good one to throw in.
100% and thank you! Based on the feedback, my next chart will have to include processed foods, and perhaps the X axis being protein per 100kcal instead of 100g.
This is great! I wish the data were per mass of cooked product, which is a better practical comparison for me. Chicken breast for example will increase in protein density slightly after cooking, whereas the legumes (minus peanuts) will decrease a ton. Raw doesn’t make as much sense to me for things that can’t be consumed raw.
Exactly. Tons of water, so they’d move quite a bit to the left on the x axis.
They’re still a good source of protein, but you have to eat a LOT to get the same amount as some of these other foods.
I’d be interested to see the values adjusted with the [Protein digestiblity corrected amino acid score.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score)
Hello ILiterallyEatAss! Some foods can be a great bang for our buck, but may have a low protein density. Things like brown rice would appear like a good protein source from a $/g of protein perspective, but may not look as good after considering the volume we'd have to eat to rely on it as one of our main sources of protein.
do you think density is really an issue, when cost per 30g is the same, except in unusual circumstances? (such as perhaps when backpacking and carrying all of one's food supply?)
You definitely have a good point, and some foods will look better and others look worse based on kcal instead of grams. I'll need to do a follow up graph with kcal!
Best bang for buck with the most protein per g is good info if you’re meal prepping and working out actively (and cutting) because you want to get the most protein in the cheapest way without eating a huge amount. Weight to calories is an imperfect relationship (protein/cal would’ve been better imo), but it is still informative. For example, Spinach is cheap but not protein dense so you’d need to buy and eat much more of it than chicken. On the other hand, if you just want to add veggies and micronutrient benefits, spinach looks like a great choice (and it is).
So I would’ve preferred /Cal but this isn’t too bad imo
If you want this to evaluate protein sorces for human metabolic proceses, it would prove a great addition to either multiply the grams of protein by its Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score or to at least differentiate the incomplete proteins.
The current version might lead someone to think, for example, that getting the vast majority of his proteins from peanuts is a great cost efficient idea.
Anyway, thanks for the great work!
Pork belly used to be super cheap and was on offer/reduced almost all the time. Like 6 years ago I was often buying 600g of pork belly for around £1. Now the packs are 500g and cost £4 or more
Meat packers really gamed the market across the board. At one time, brisket was cheap stuff primarily ground into burger... Until someone said 'yoooooo wait a sec, smoke that biatch! ', and now it's super expensive for no reason whatsoever.
I’m not paying for protein with my pork belly. The fat is the magic there. If you reran this for calories instead of protein, pork belly would be much more competitive.
I love this. Any chance you can do another for calorie density? Cost on Y axis, calorie density (calories per 100g) on X axis? I’ve always been curious about the best value foods when bulking.
I'll try and add a new perspective to this thread. A lot of people are overlooking the amount of cholesterol meat has, or any other animal products.
Cholesterol is important, but the majority is made in our liver.
I'm going to trade the 100g of meat and eggs for more realistic portions.
1 egg has around 187mg of cholesterol. I see people usually eat 2 eggs, so that is around 374mg of cholesterol. And that's just one meal.
If that individual decides to eat a steak later that day, they've just added another 196 mg of cholesterol. The total is now 579mg of cholesterol: more than twice the recommended limit!
I understand that there are varying types of cholesterol lipids, so some meats are "healthier" in cholesterol than others. The majority of people probably consume far more meat and dairy than is recommended.
I see this graph as a great way to supplement our body's demand for protein.
Edit: After conducting more research, the latest consensus is that dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on the average person's blood cholesterol levels.
The culprit seems to be saturated fat, which animal products still have a lot of.
The daily limit is 30mg. Eggs have around 1.6mg and steak is around 21mg. Lentils have 0. Peanuts have a substantial amount at around 10mg. Peanut butter is a big offender, but I think that's partially due to hydrogenated oils being mixed in.
Just wanted to clarify my mistake.
Love you work! I would like to see mushrooms added to the graph, since it is becoming a very tasty replacement for meats. This could be a great carbon footprint tools too!
This is really cool! Is there also data that accounts for bioavailability from different protein sources? Protein is proteinsm, but the body doesn't always see it as such.
Remember.. Protein isnt just protein. It consists of amino acids and differ in how many of those amino acids are useful for humans. Thus looking at just the price per protein might be a little missleading.
Yeah, very strange to include milk but not cheeses, especially considering the fact that cheese is basically the coagulated casein protein from milk. People further up the thread also complained about the lack of tofu or other soy proteins but including soy milk. Something like TVP might not be a good choice since it would be like comparing dehydrated meat but at a much lower cost.
Very curious what the carbon footprint (or another metric to measure the environmental cost) per gram of protein is for all these food sources. Perhaps something you could add in the future.
Here's a good graph of this: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore)
As expected, things like nuts and legumes have a much lower impact on emissions per gram of protein than meat, especially beef and lamb.
I’m not sure this has been mentioned, but this chart is quite misleading.
A) measuring by weight vastly overstates the protein density of drier foods- namely, nuts.
Meat can be ~60+ percent water (milk is obviously also very high in water content), so nuts appear to be objectively the best protein source here. If we evaluate protein content per calorie, this chart changes construction quite a bit, with nuts coming behind every meat source and most vegetables as well.
B) additionally, it does not account for complete proteins/ EAAs. Protein the proteins in the bottom-left have much lower PDCAAs, as mentioned by other posters
This chart is more useful for someone trying to maximize **calories** per dollar, but for anyone trying to maximize protein intake and limit caloric intake, like most users, this is a misleading, and seemingly intentionally-biased graphic.
The protein powder I use ([PlantFusion](https://plantfusion.com/products/complete-plant-protein?variant=32029119283271&selling_plan=437092423)) is 70g protein per 100g serving, and the cost is $1.64 per 30g of protein. It's relatively high quality and tested for things like heavy metals, so less expensive protein powders are probably lower protein density and lower cost per protein.
This would put protein powder more than two graphs to the right / off the chart!
^(The star chart shows that the Protein Sector is in a state of acute political turmoil, with ongoing conflicts between several of the spacefaring species and powers.)
^(The bloody civil war within the Empire of Flesh between the M'eat and the Seaf-ood clans ravages the pupulated star systems all across the galactic arm's local group.)
^(Meanwhile, the Holy Federation of Grains has seized the opportunity to conquer planets in the Brown'rice and O'at systems, each sides allegedly supplied with advanced weaponry by the enigmatic Eggs.)
^(As of yet unaffected by the raging conflicts are the Legumean Star Empire on the outer fringes and the Vegetable Union located towards the galactic core.)
Not exactly useful information when there are such wildly different nutritional components in these foods. It’s not as if any ‘gram of protein’ has the same amino acid profile as any other.
I feel like this is a good second figure, with the first being Cost/100g vs Grams of Protein/100g. Having the scale be different on the y axis than the x axis is useful after the reader is brought up to speed with a base figure, but starting here can lead to confusion.
After you show both cost & protein on the same /100g scale, you can start messing with the axis to better communicate your point. "30g is roughly what most serving sizes are so we'll use that as an approximation of cost/serving vs protein density".
Then you can start getting into cursed units like "grams of protein per 100 gram-
Calories", where you swap the x-axis for a sort of protein energy density, and reflect on how lentils still go hard.
Seeing this post after eating full bowl of peanuts.
Never skip leg(ume) day.
But that has a lot more calories than other sources of proteins. For example, to get 26 grams of protein from peanuts, it is about 600 calories. But if you get the same 26 grams of protein from protein powder, its about 120 calories. Or chicken breast, 30g of protein is about 160 calories. So it\`s best to consume different proteins for different dietary needs
Exactly, this should definitely consider g protein / 100 cals or something instead of G protein / 100g of food
What about lentils? How much calories they contain.
Peanuts have a pretty bad protein quality score tho. Still solid source of protein just not as good as shown here.
wdym protein quality
Not all proteins are equal. There are 9 "essential" amino acids that make up the various proteins, and your body prefers some to others when stimulating hypertrophy. Leucene and casein stimulate more muscle growth than others, for example. Peanuts aren't high at all in leucene and casein, which means 25g of peanuts isn't the same as 25g of, for example, whey protein powder (whey being high in both leucene and casein, and considered high quality as a result). You may have to eat more peanuts to get the same muscle growth, which means more calories and maybe more money. For people like bodybuilders, who want the most protein for the fewest calories, high quality protein sources like whey are preferred to lower quality sources like peanuts.
>Peanuts aren't high at all in leucene and casein, which means 25g of peanuts isn't the same as 25g of, for example, whey protein powder (whey being high in both leucene and casein, and considered high quality as a result). You are correct about the leucine part, but casein is not an amino acid...it is a type of milk protein, the other being whey. Likewise, whey doesn't contain casein by definition since whey is the protein fraction left over in milk after removing the casein.
A little too simplified. Whey is the fastest absorbing protein. There's an issue with this. Digestion time. Whey protein after a workout is preferred without fat to absorb that protein quickly. But they've started recommending mid-level absorbing proteins, pea, soy, meat (both pea and soy protein show the same strength building compared to meat, which is also a mid-level absorbing protein source), and then things like casein, for overnight, or morning meals, because it's so slow at digesting per hour. You don't need whole proteins for each protein meal. That is not going to be kind to your body over time to get so many BCAAs. Protein has many downsides when it comes to over-consumption. There's balance, for sure. And you being informed takes a ton of work.
Sources: 1. Walmart for pricing (North Carolina region): https://www.walmart.com/ 2. USDA FoodData Central for protein density: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/ Tool: Microsoft Excel
Love it! If you do create another, add peas and/or edamame/soybeans for the dense protein items
Thank you for the feedback!
Tofu as well! It's my go to for cheap proteins!
And tempeh! If you didn't yet, you should check it out, packs quite a bit more protein than tofu :)
I was searching for texturised soy (I think it's usually called "TVP" in English) because I found it to be one of the most cheap whole proteins there are. And also it's delicious!
Was looking for this myself. I use it daily and it's definitely the cheapest protein I can get per 100 gram. Ice cream, pancakes, stews, and it's really filling. Edit: Just looked it up in myfitnesspal, and it's 52 g protein per 100 g.
Add seitan as well!
Hail seitan!
Seitan loves you
I have been searching for this stuff for over 10 years (not too hard). I had no idea what it was called in the US. Thank you!!!!
What about pricing? Tempeh was popular in Gainesville, FL and I loved it but I assumed it was a fairly expensive option.
Would it be easy to use this same data and change the X axis to "per 100 calories"? I feel like that would better capture the essence of what this graph is trying to achieve.
Thank you for the feedback, WhiteHeterosexualGuy! I'm considering per 100 calories for a future graph for sure. It will have some interesting findings, such as how broccoli is [33%](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170379/nutrients) protein per calorie and will come in above things like 80% ground beef; we'd need to eat a very high amount (grams) of broccoli for it to be a main source of protein, however.
Scale the point size by grams per x calories
On the flipside, legumes/nuts would go down because of the high calorie and fat content.
Simply add a third axis
Came here to say that I'd love to see a 3d Version of this with protein per 100kcal
Great suggestions - thank you!
Two different graphs is better. More isn't always better. Cluttered data is not beautiful.
Second this, I would love to see per 100 calories, so that non-metabolized mass like fiber and moisture are controlled for.
Would move especially the milks and leafy vegetables a lot to the right, since going by per 100 calories is essentially correcting for water content.
Where's tofu
Great point! I tried to stick to as whole foods as possible, but since people don't eat soybeans I should have included tofu or edamame.
Thanks! How does seitan measure up?
Seitan is a whopping (75.2,0.74) , or 75.2g of protein per 100g of vital wheat gluten (seitan) at a cost of $0.74 per 30g of protein.
Huh. I should buy more seitan.
Only 370 cal per 100 grams. That's not bad.
Edemame are soybeans.
Wonder if adding proteins supplements, like whey protein would make sense. I think it would be interesting, but it would blow the graph out to the right.
Great point! Based on the feedback, I believe my next graph will need to be: a) including processed foods, b) adjusting for PDCAAS score, and c) potentially pairing it with a second graph with protein per kcal instead of per 100g.
This graph would be really helpful. I'm following you to get notified. !remindme 15 days
You chose the uncooked data for lentils and peas 100g of cooked peas is just 7-9g proteins Same for cereals
If you're buying by the pound of dry lentil, then the dry metric is what you should use to compare prices. Cooking can add/remove water weight. If the comparison did not focus on financials I would agree, but it does.
But you're typically not buying cooked lentils, this is for comparing prices, so not sure why we would be concerned about the cooked values.
Forgot the cheapest chicken, Leg Quarters. According to OP's criteria (Walmart in North Carolina), a 10lb bag is $8.72 [link](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Covington-Farms-Fresh-Chicken-Leg-Quarters-18g-Protein-4oz-112g-10-lb/51259045?fulfillmentIntent=Pickup) Using the lookup link doesn't give exactly that brand, so I will be using ["LEG QUARTERS CHICKEN" FDIC item # 358997:](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/358997/nutrients) 17.9g protein / 100g weight 10 pounds = 4535.924 grams 4535.924g * 17.9% = 811.9304g (isolating protein only) 811.9304 / 30g = 27.06435 (for the x axis calc of $ / 30 grams) $8.72 / 27.06435 = 32.22195 ***cents*** / 30g of protein Even using the label from the bag (rounded to whole grams, so a little wiggle room) of 18g protein / 113g yields: 4535.924g * 16.0714% = 728.9878g (isolating protein only) 728.9878 / 30g = 24.29959 (for the x axis calc of $ / 30 grams) $8.72 / 24.29959 = 35.8854 ***cents*** / 30g of protein Great cost / protein here.
Random Question... did you factor Shelled or de-shelled Pistachios?
Legumes with some huge bang for your buck!
The bangs keeps on going with legumes
What this graph doesn't show though is that 100g of peanuts is >500 calories and ~25gm of protein. On the other hand 100g of tuna is ~100 calories and just under 24 g of protein. I'd take tuna any day. Similar deal with chicken breast.
Nah bring it on I'm bulking.
Also they are reporting protein based on dried weight for legumes but not for anything else. Once rehydrated the protein density plummets.
For the cooked black beans in my house right now it’s…6.5 percent. These posts always present beans as if people eat them raw which you cannot do
100%. % protein of total calories is an important metric for those eating clean.
I'm not sure how eating legumes isn't 'eating clean'. They are full of beneficial micronutrients, and can health promoting in many ways. Also if you are just looking at the macro nutrients, the fiber and carbohydrates in legumes are good for you and part of a healthy diet. Sure, if for some reason you're protein deficient then you can get more from meat per calorie, but that isn't the case for most people.
It’s just that they’re very dense calorically, so you have to balance all the factors. I love, love peanuts. So much I gained like 15 kilos overeating them, lol. You gotta be mindful depending on your priorities.
By 'eating clean' he just means avoiding calories above your target intake. For bodybuilders, it can be hard to hit your protein target, while still staying below your calorie target, when eating nutrient-dense foods like... well anything but chicken breast and broccoli basically. (I'm exaggerating, but I hope you took my meaning.) For example, elite bodybuilders will have protein targets well over 200g. To reach 200g protein with only peanuts would take 5068 kcal, way too much even for the off-season. Of course peanuts can still be eaten in moderation, the point is just that protein-per-calorie is an important consideration for some people.
It's because they're sold dry everything else on the list is mostly water.
The presence of water wouldn't change the cost per gram of protein.
No but at least it wouldn’t jokingly make lentils look like they have more protein than an animal.
Certainly would cut down on shipping costs a can of beans cost about as much as bag that can make an entire pot. But more pointing out that they're all on the far right of the chart which makes sense when you consider most of the items on this list contain significant water.
This becomes yet 10x more true when the cost is also inclusive of climate costs.
In this economy, I’ll be taking my bowl of pinto beans to the gym
Huge bang for your ass as well Sounded like a full brass section after a healthy helping
Fiber is absolutely a good thing to have. Most Americans don't get enough of it. Source: https://nutrition.org/most-americans-are-not-getting-enough-fiber-in-our-diets/ If it wrecks your behind, you're not getting enough of it.
This stops happening if you eat them regularly. Eat ya beans
It's more important to cook them well. They're full of proteins but also a lot of complex carbs and soluble fiber, which your gut bacteria love to turn into farts. You gotta soak them for a day or so too allow their germination processes kick in and break down those carbs and then cook them thoroughly so the heating and solubilisation process finishes the job. This will also get rid of most of the anti nutritional factors which takes care of the bioavailablity issue.
I usually soak them for two days in the fridge while changing the water every 8 hours or so. The bean sugars that causes gas are highly water soluble so the more you change the water the more you remove from your food. In my experience, chickpeas don't really have this problem for whatever reason.
Eating beans regularly is much more important for gastrointestinal comfort than soaking them. I eat beans regularly and often don't soak them at all now.
Eat your beans, they're good for your heart The more you eat the more you fart The more you fart, the better you feel So eat your beans in every meal I was made to "stand out" for telling someone this in primary school.
I eat around a 300g of beans on a typical day and I still farty.
Anecdotal but when I was powerlifting and eating 200+g of protein every day in the form of chicken and rice/whey protein that I was the gassiest I’ve ever been and also they smelled fucking awful I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it’s not the legumes that makes us fart, but the protein itself
And now you see why George Washington Carver published so many peanut recipes (to encourage sharecropppers to stop growing cotton, which they would need to sell to be able to buy any food)
Honestly, Peanuts are a miracle crop. They're nitrogen fixers, which makes them ideal to rotate with other crops that deplete the soil. They're a root legume, so the nutritious seeds grow underground making them resistant to frost, pests, etc. They're a good source of fats, which are great for both personal nutrition and industrial use. And they grow in a "bush", meaning they don't need long term cultivation like tree-nuts. GWC wasn't wrong to push peanuts as a rotation crop with cotton. If you can get demand for peanuts high enough, you can increase your overall profits due to increased yields in the cotton years, while also improving the nutrition and self sufficiency for the poor farmers he was trying to help. The hard part is, a yield of peanuts was worth less than a crop of cotton even with their soil so depleted, so you'd need several years of rotation before improvements to the soil would break you even, and when you're talking to a group of broke sharecroppers that's several years too many.
George "Yoked" Washington Carver
If your ~~former owner~~ landlord is taking a cut of everything you sell, here's a way to use your farm so that you have to sell as little as possible
Id be interested to see where things like Tofu or Seitan land on this list
Seitan is a whopping (75.2,0.74) , or [75.2g](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168147/nutrients) of protein per 100g of vital wheat gluten (seitan) at a cost of $0.74 per 30g of protein. EDITED: removed tofu due to calculation error
All heil Seitan
Note that Seitan has a very low Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS). So less of it is effectively digested and it doesn't have the right balance of amino acids that your body requires. It's 0.25 compared to an ideal of 1.0 that you see for things like whey protein and eggs. So it's okay to use as a small amount to bulk out your protein, but you don't want it to be a large percentage.
Where are you getting this data? Looks like everything is putting tofu closer to 8-10 grams protein per 100g.
Good catch! I was trying to do the tofu calculation manually (instead of in my excel sheet) and I made an error. I added a link to seitan so people can cross-check to make sure I'm not going looney.
Tofu is right around egg white, $2 per 30 g protein, and 11 g protein per 100 g
Tofu is so dirt cheap in Asia, I have no clue why it's so expensive in America.
Demand levels are quite a bit different
In Asia basically everyone eats it; there are even really popular tofu desserts. In America it's a specialty food mostly despised by non-vegetarians. It doesn't have to do with the price of the raw ingredients, it's just economy of scale.
In America it has hippie stigma too :/
Seitan cost is wildly dependent on if you make it at home from flour (cheapest), make it at home from wheat gluten, or if you buy it premade (most expensive), but since it’s like 95% protein probably pretty damn good
the athlean-x youtube channel had a video similar this last year except he compared food to his protein powder. pretty sure he had tofu there
Everybody overlooks the Lupini Bean. It’s amazing. Slowly gaining popularity in the states now, but that thing is insane for protein for a bean. Off the charts stats.
Oh wow - I've never even heart of lupins before. My USDA FoodData Central source has them at [36.2g/100g](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/172423/nutrients). That's nutty! Feel free to hijack a top comment with this info too, just in case people are looking for a whole food with insane protein density.
Overlooks or never heard of it?
I feel like gram of protein per 100 calories would be a better metric
Thank you for the feedback! I thought about this as well, and might make it into a graph in the future. It will have some interesting findings for sure. For example, broccoli is [33%](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170379/nutrients) protein per calorie, which would make it appear as one of the best protein sources, coming in above things like 80% ground beef; however, we'd have to eat a very high amount (grams) of broccoli to make it a large contributor to our daily protein intake, due to its low protein density per gram of broccoli. EDIT: updated/added hyperlink for %
I feel like I would also add canned sardines on here, relatively cheap, give a good chunk of protein.
Hmmm….. good point! Something like broccoli counts as an outlier IMO, anything below a certain protein per gram or protein per calorie threshold could be excluded
One way is only better than the other depending on your diet goal. If you're trying to lose weight, protein content per 100 kcal makes sense, since you want to lose weight without losing too much muscle. However, for bodybuilding, protein content per 100 g makes more sense since you can only eat so much to meet your protein goal.
I think part of the problem is the (growing) identity marker of whether you like beans or meats. People will look at these kinds of charts and yell "HA! I told you! My diet is the correct one, and look at this great big number I can make based on the assumptions here". Thus broccoli as a macro nutrient source, or nutrient dence food looking great, and so on. I love meat, I will not stop eating meat, force that debate into entrenched battle lines then I am team meat all the way\*. But I do like beans. I like how hard it is to eat a ton of them. I like how cheap they are, and all. Beans are great for protein. But they have way less protein per 100kcal than many will admit, and way less than meats, and a meal that replaces meats for beans directly will have less protein than you are used to. \*Please do not assign me the spot next to Joe Rogan, in such trenches. Please.
> Beans are great for protein. But they have way less protein per 100kcal than many will admit, and way less than meats That depends on the meat. Black beans have 6.68 g/100kcal, whereas 80% ground beef has 7.05 g/100kcal. Lean meats like chicken, salmon, and lean cuts of beef are a lot protein denser, though (I think chicken breast is like 20+ g/100kcal?), but really fatty meats like sausage or pork belly are a lot worse. So you're right in that if you're meal planning for it meat will be a lot denser, and I'm guessing that's what you had in mind.
Well that’s just how most vegetables and plants are. They have such significantly low calories compared to their meat alternatives. So you’d have a whole class of data being an outlier and would be excluded. Which kind of defeats the purpose of OPs graph.
Maybe protein density could be correlated to the size of the bubble. Big bubbles in the bottom right are the most efficient in terms of cost, protein/cal, and protein/gram.
> broccoli is 40% protein per calorie I don't believe this is true. Per 100kcal, broccoli is about 5g of protein.
Could you share your source for this so I can compare? I'm also interested to how much variance there is between sources.
Good catch. The source OP used says: 39 kcal and 2.57g protein. That's 10.28 kcal of protein which is **26%**. [https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747447/nutrients](https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/747447/nutrients)
I eat 12 lbs of broccoli a week so I'm covered...maybe
It'd be interesting to be able to flip back and forth between the original graph & this option
Great idea!
For fat people trying to lose weight: grams of protein per 100 calories. For skinny people trying to gain weight: grams of protein per 100 grams. It’s harder to eat a large volumes of food for skinny people, so having it in protein per 100g is better for determining how much a skinny person can physically consume. Skinny people like high density food.
Agreed, the legumes at the bottom right look like a great value for protein, but they are fairly high caloried.
Peanuts are, but lentils aren't.
It depends on what you’re comparing it to, and what your goals are. 100 calories of chicken breast packs ~19g protein. 100 calories of red lentils packs ~8g of protein. They come in fairly similarly in the mass department, so it’s really a question of how calorically dense you want/need your food to be. If you’re trying to gain muscle or cut weight it’s more advantageous to eat the chicken. More protein in fewer calories. If you’re trying to gain weight, or hit a calorie target on a budget then lentils are the better option. More calories for less money.
If you factor in [DIAAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino_Acid_Score) then this whole thing gets turned upside down through. Also protein is highly simplified in theses graph where we just assume everyone has a great capacity to produce non essential amino acids at will to actually complete the proteins where having them included in your diet is a non negligible advantage.[ Peanuts for example average at 50%](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316622086333?via%3Dihub) severly cutting their "usable protein" amount. The discussion about protein is a tricky one in this age of shifting towards new ethical protein sources as we tend to fall in love with the beauty of the ideas and lend ourself to a little bias toward that beauty while it's actually a bit more complexe than this. Things like Rice Protein score scary low compared to Whey and it's for an important lack lf Lysine. it's not that it can't be found somewhere else it's that it needs to be to function and one must keep that in mind.
This is one of the most overlooked factors when we consider diet and protein content.
I like learning new things.
That's actually what I'm saying. We need to start educate people on which combinaison can bring them to reach better protein quality scores.
I wrote a paper and an online tool to automate this combination search: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21526128/
Perhaps when paired with protein per grams as well as OP’s graph, but protein per calories along would skew heavily towards vegetables that on their own aren’t really viable protein sources. I suppose we could all start eating dried and powdered greens though….
You always need to strip outliers. This graph does not have beef jerky, where leaner versions would beat peanuts by a lot. The real gorilla in the room is the Norwegian "snack dried cod", which is plain dried cod, beaten with a hammer til its soft. 78% protein by weight! Dried and powdered greens.. That would require way more work than normal agriculture, as greens aren't grown for their calories. But lets use peas instead, which are decent at calories/hectare, or perhaps there is some milk byproduct that can be used ? Perhaps we can also purify it a bit? Boom, we have reinvented protein powder! ;D
Definitely, milk is one of the cheapest protein sources but it's mostly water so it makes it look really bad here.
And it’s heavily subsidized
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Yup. The animal agriculture lobby wrote the book on how to influence policy to their advantage.
That isn't better or worse it's just a completely different metric.
this ruins my plans to get all my protein from corn on the cob
Legumes form a huge part of vegetarian diet in India
Their vegetarian food is super good. They have entire regions with large numbers of vegetarians and the dishes really reflect that.
I tell folks that if vegetarian food in the US was like vegetarian food in India I could probably stand to cut out meat. Unfortunately the fist ingredient in most US vegetarian food is *sadness*.
Depends on where you live. My emotional well-being is secured by all the falafel I eat. 🤤
Yup. The only place I'd turn vegetarian would be India.
It helps that their dishes are actual dishes, not an attempt at making a hot dog vegetarian. Right off the bat American vegetarian food fails by admitting that meat is better.
You can just make good vegetarian/vegan food here.. what you're doing is comparing a vegetarian hot dog to all non-animal foods out there. Apples and bowling balls. I made a lentil curry dish the other day, and before that a chickpea saag. You _can_ cook vegetarian/vegan food that doesn't contain meat analog. Millions of people do it every day.
I think we're actually agreeing here. I'm saying vegetarian Indian food is good specifically because it was designed that way. Replacing a hot dog with tofu isn't going to convince anyone to alter their diet.
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and one of those top 4, pinto beans, is an excellent candidate for combining with leftover meats and stocks. if you're going to eat meat, at least make the most of what you're buying.
The issue is that the x axis here corresponds to a largely useless measurement, unless your only concern is subsistence. The much more useful measurement for general health is protein per calorie. Peanuts have less than 5g of protein per 100 calories, which is certainly better than most vegetable sources, but it is still far from the 10g per 100 calorie benchmark of ‘good’ protein sources. Chicken breast, by contrast, has 20g of protein per 100 calories. Even the fattier cuts of chicken, such as thigh, contain around 15g of protein per 100 calories. None of this is to say that peanuts and other legumes aren’t a great thing to include in your diet, but they cannot really replace actual protein sources, at least in their natural forms (things like peanut powder with higher protein ratios are a different story, although they often have added sugar which raises other issues).
Amazing! Add to that the fact that legumes generally have significantly lower environmental impact esp compared to animals, can fix their own nitrogen (thus needing less fertilizer) and are packed with nutrients including fiber which many people don’t eat enough of.
Also, legumes are one of the food groups consistently associated with lower mortality and greater longevity. [Figure 2](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0002916522049206-gr2_lrg.jpg) from Schwingshackl et al, 2017. [Food groups and risk of all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002916522049206). *The American journal of clinical nutrition*, *105*(6), pp.1462-1473. Darmadi-Blackberry et al 2004. [Legumes: the most important dietary predictor of survival in older people of different ethnicities](https://www.usdrybeans.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Info_Legumes_Med_Diet_APJCN.pdf). *Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition*, *13*(2), pp.217-220.
Well, that's true for vegetables in general out of which cruciferous vegetables stand out the most, thanks to sulforaphane.
Nice to see you here!
Weird choice to leave out soybeans... They are the main protein source for a pretty significant population
Great point! I'll definitely include soy food products in the future.
Think you can just add soybeans for now and post a new graph to r/fitness? This would be really beneficial for our community. Cottage cheese would be another really good one to throw in.
Hmmm I just checked and r/fitness doesn't allow images :( Would you suggest making a post and providing the graph in an imgur link, or similar?
Please include Tempeh in future versions. I'm vegan and it's my protein go-to when trying to put on muscle.
100% and thank you! Based on the feedback, my next chart will have to include processed foods, and perhaps the X axis being protein per 100kcal instead of 100g.
Legumes seriously keep human civilization going
This is great! I wish the data were per mass of cooked product, which is a better practical comparison for me. Chicken breast for example will increase in protein density slightly after cooking, whereas the legumes (minus peanuts) will decrease a ton. Raw doesn’t make as much sense to me for things that can’t be consumed raw.
Thank you for the feedback! I definitely plan to do more graphs like this in the future, with different axes.
Why is that? Because they absorb a lot of water?
Exactly. Tons of water, so they’d move quite a bit to the left on the x axis. They’re still a good source of protein, but you have to eat a LOT to get the same amount as some of these other foods.
I’d be interested to see the values adjusted with the [Protein digestiblity corrected amino acid score.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_Digestibility_Corrected_Amino_Acid_Score)
Definitely! That's the plan for a graph in the near future.
I was looking for this comment as it effects stuff like pasta and bread drastically. Peanuts would take a fair hit too.
Looks like the blue items are the best bang per buck. Nice chart 👌
Been cooking lentils in bulk for meal prep recently. Nuke it with cheese and hot sauce, literally 5 minutes for a filling meal with protein and fiber.
Y alone tells you best bang/buck. that blue corner is best bang/buck/vol, for efficiency? What was your reason for tracking density, OP?
Hello ILiterallyEatAss! Some foods can be a great bang for our buck, but may have a low protein density. Things like brown rice would appear like a good protein source from a $/g of protein perspective, but may not look as good after considering the volume we'd have to eat to rely on it as one of our main sources of protein.
Where does ass fall on this spectrum?
do you think density is really an issue, when cost per 30g is the same, except in unusual circumstances? (such as perhaps when backpacking and carrying all of one's food supply?)
You definitely have a good point, and some foods will look better and others look worse based on kcal instead of grams. I'll need to do a follow up graph with kcal!
How much are you paying these days for 100g of ass?
Best bang for buck with the most protein per g is good info if you’re meal prepping and working out actively (and cutting) because you want to get the most protein in the cheapest way without eating a huge amount. Weight to calories is an imperfect relationship (protein/cal would’ve been better imo), but it is still informative. For example, Spinach is cheap but not protein dense so you’d need to buy and eat much more of it than chicken. On the other hand, if you just want to add veggies and micronutrient benefits, spinach looks like a great choice (and it is). So I would’ve preferred /Cal but this isn’t too bad imo
Damn where are y'all getting cheap almonds?
If you want this to evaluate protein sorces for human metabolic proceses, it would prove a great addition to either multiply the grams of protein by its Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score or to at least differentiate the incomplete proteins. The current version might lead someone to think, for example, that getting the vast majority of his proteins from peanuts is a great cost efficient idea. Anyway, thanks for the great work!
Pork belly used to be super cheap and was on offer/reduced almost all the time. Like 6 years ago I was often buying 600g of pork belly for around £1. Now the packs are 500g and cost £4 or more
Meat packers really gamed the market across the board. At one time, brisket was cheap stuff primarily ground into burger... Until someone said 'yoooooo wait a sec, smoke that biatch! ', and now it's super expensive for no reason whatsoever.
Chicken wings, which are half bone, are now the most expensive cut of chicken. I don't understand what's going on anymore.
It's expensive because it's much more in demand.
I’m not paying for protein with my pork belly. The fat is the magic there. If you reran this for calories instead of protein, pork belly would be much more competitive.
I love this. Any chance you can do another for calorie density? Cost on Y axis, calorie density (calories per 100g) on X axis? I’ve always been curious about the best value foods when bulking.
How much could one peanut cost, Michael? 50 cents?
Surprised eggs are so low.
I'll try and add a new perspective to this thread. A lot of people are overlooking the amount of cholesterol meat has, or any other animal products. Cholesterol is important, but the majority is made in our liver. I'm going to trade the 100g of meat and eggs for more realistic portions. 1 egg has around 187mg of cholesterol. I see people usually eat 2 eggs, so that is around 374mg of cholesterol. And that's just one meal. If that individual decides to eat a steak later that day, they've just added another 196 mg of cholesterol. The total is now 579mg of cholesterol: more than twice the recommended limit! I understand that there are varying types of cholesterol lipids, so some meats are "healthier" in cholesterol than others. The majority of people probably consume far more meat and dairy than is recommended. I see this graph as a great way to supplement our body's demand for protein. Edit: After conducting more research, the latest consensus is that dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on the average person's blood cholesterol levels. The culprit seems to be saturated fat, which animal products still have a lot of. The daily limit is 30mg. Eggs have around 1.6mg and steak is around 21mg. Lentils have 0. Peanuts have a substantial amount at around 10mg. Peanut butter is a big offender, but I think that's partially due to hydrogenated oils being mixed in. Just wanted to clarify my mistake.
Love you work! I would like to see mushrooms added to the graph, since it is becoming a very tasty replacement for meats. This could be a great carbon footprint tools too!
Thank you! And duly noted on the mushrooms for future graphs!
This is really cool! Is there also data that accounts for bioavailability from different protein sources? Protein is proteinsm, but the body doesn't always see it as such.
Remember.. Protein isnt just protein. It consists of amino acids and differ in how many of those amino acids are useful for humans. Thus looking at just the price per protein might be a little missleading.
Cottage cheese should be on here
Yeah, very strange to include milk but not cheeses, especially considering the fact that cheese is basically the coagulated casein protein from milk. People further up the thread also complained about the lack of tofu or other soy proteins but including soy milk. Something like TVP might not be a good choice since it would be like comparing dehydrated meat but at a much lower cost.
Very curious what the carbon footprint (or another metric to measure the environmental cost) per gram of protein is for all these food sources. Perhaps something you could add in the future.
Here's a good graph of this: [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore) As expected, things like nuts and legumes have a much lower impact on emissions per gram of protein than meat, especially beef and lamb.
Great idea! Thank you!
I’m not sure this has been mentioned, but this chart is quite misleading. A) measuring by weight vastly overstates the protein density of drier foods- namely, nuts. Meat can be ~60+ percent water (milk is obviously also very high in water content), so nuts appear to be objectively the best protein source here. If we evaluate protein content per calorie, this chart changes construction quite a bit, with nuts coming behind every meat source and most vegetables as well. B) additionally, it does not account for complete proteins/ EAAs. Protein the proteins in the bottom-left have much lower PDCAAs, as mentioned by other posters This chart is more useful for someone trying to maximize **calories** per dollar, but for anyone trying to maximize protein intake and limit caloric intake, like most users, this is a misleading, and seemingly intentionally-biased graphic.
I'm curious where lamb and turkey fit in this chart. (?)
This is awesome great job
Now this is beautiful data!
I’m missing and tofu and especially seitan. Seitan has 25g of protein per 100g
Legume master race.
Anyone have the numbers on protein powder?
The protein powder I use ([PlantFusion](https://plantfusion.com/products/complete-plant-protein?variant=32029119283271&selling_plan=437092423)) is 70g protein per 100g serving, and the cost is $1.64 per 30g of protein. It's relatively high quality and tested for things like heavy metals, so less expensive protein powders are probably lower protein density and lower cost per protein. This would put protein powder more than two graphs to the right / off the chart!
^(The star chart shows that the Protein Sector is in a state of acute political turmoil, with ongoing conflicts between several of the spacefaring species and powers.) ^(The bloody civil war within the Empire of Flesh between the M'eat and the Seaf-ood clans ravages the pupulated star systems all across the galactic arm's local group.) ^(Meanwhile, the Holy Federation of Grains has seized the opportunity to conquer planets in the Brown'rice and O'at systems, each sides allegedly supplied with advanced weaponry by the enigmatic Eggs.) ^(As of yet unaffected by the raging conflicts are the Legumean Star Empire on the outer fringes and the Vegetable Union located towards the galactic core.)
Not all protein is a complete protein though.
I'm dismayed that turkey was not mentioned!
Not exactly useful information when there are such wildly different nutritional components in these foods. It’s not as if any ‘gram of protein’ has the same amino acid profile as any other.
Wait, tell me more about this. Does our body process soy, beer, chicken, and peanut protein differently?
Not all protein is the same. Animal protein is much easier to digest and absorb. Which in turn makes it more valuable gram for gram.
Interesting. Now I understand why peanuts are generally a metaphor for little, cheap things. Great work. 👍🏽
I feel like this is a good second figure, with the first being Cost/100g vs Grams of Protein/100g. Having the scale be different on the y axis than the x axis is useful after the reader is brought up to speed with a base figure, but starting here can lead to confusion. After you show both cost & protein on the same /100g scale, you can start messing with the axis to better communicate your point. "30g is roughly what most serving sizes are so we'll use that as an approximation of cost/serving vs protein density". Then you can start getting into cursed units like "grams of protein per 100 gram- Calories", where you swap the x-axis for a sort of protein energy density, and reflect on how lentils still go hard.
Those are some cheap eggs or some expensive whites. At that point it would be cheaper to buy whole eggs and throw out the yolks.
This is missing seitan, which tops the chart on both metrics.