How Much Protein is in Your Protein?
15 March 2026
Protein is an important macronutrient that has received a lot of attention over the last few decades. Foods and a food group that is high in protein are also often also referred to as protein, for example, "steak is the protein in this dish". This simplification made protein easy to understand and apply as a rule. However, any single food is more complex and not all protein foods are created equal.
Some of the food typically seen as proteins come with more fat or carbohydrates than protein when measured by calories: you would need to eat more of them to reach the same protein targets. This can be beneficial when eating for example beans as these come with healthy fibre most people don't get enough of. However, it can also be problematic when the food is high in saturated fat, like cheese. The advice is to limit consumption of saturated fat to avoid cardiovascular diseases, the biggest killer in the modern world [1].
Selected foods typically described as "protein", as measured by calories provided by each macronutrient.
Saturated Fat
Saturated fat is known to contribute to cardiovascular diseases such as heart disease and stroke [2]. Many of the foods seen as a protein that have a high fat content, also have a high saturated fat content. The British Heart Foundation recommends to keep saturated fat under 10% of your total calorie consumption [3]. The American Heart Association recommends an even lower limit of less than 6% of total calories from saturated fat [2].
Saturated fats are found in dairy, fatty meats and processed foods such as cookies, pastries, and pizza. The first two groups may be chosen because of their protein status, and unwittingly add a large portion of saturated fats. For example, about 42% of calories in hard cheese come from saturated fat. In order to still keep saturated fat intake under 6% of total, 100 calories of cheese (about 27 grams or 1 ounce) needs to be accompanied by 600 calories from foods without any saturated fat. Other proteins with similar issues, to a slightly lesser degree, are pork chops and sausages, beef mince, steak, chicken wings, bacon, milk (except skimmed milk), and eggs.
Nuts and seeds are often suggested as good sources of plant-based protein. Per gram there is a fair bit of protein in nuts and seeds, however, per calorie the protein content is pretty low. While nuts and seeds only have a moderate amount of saturated fat, the total fat content is such that you need to eat a huge amount of calories to hit any protein target. Nuts and seeds do have other health benefits thanks to their healthy fats and fibre, and are part of a healthy diet, yet typically only in moderation [4].
Nuts and seeds are often suggested as good sources of plant-based protein. However, while there is merit to the protein claim per gram, per calorie you would need to eat a huge amount of these foods to hit a protein target. Nuts and seeds do have other health benefits in moderation thanks to their healthy fats, low saturated fat, and fibre, making them a part of a healthy diet [4].
Fibre
One of the main ways most people can improve their diet is to add more fibre, found in wholegrains, vegetables, beans, lentils, and other plant foods. Ultra-processed foods tend to have less of it. Animal products, oils, and fats have none. Increasing fibre can lower the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and bowel cancer. Because of its benefits, the NHS recommends to eat at least 30 grams of fibre every day [5].
The fibre content explains why beans and lentils are healthy protein sources, despite having less protein per calorie compared to other foods. You need to eat more of these to get to the same protein target, and that extra food also brings with it extra fibre and many micronutrients, but very little (if any) saturated fat. Beans and lentils are a great source of protein, just eat a bit more of them [6].
Complete Protein
You cannot mention meat and plant-based protein without someone raising "complete protein" and digestibility, so let's cover these briefly. It is said that animal products have complete protein while plant foods have incomplete ones. In short, this is a misconception you don't have to worry about [7].
Protein is built up from amino acids. Nine of those amino acids our body needs, but cannot make itself, and are called essential. The other amino acids our body can make. Now, let's assume you eat exactly enough total protein for they day from one protein source. If that food delivers sufficient quantities of all essential amino acids the protein in the food can be labelled complete.
There are two reasons you don't have to worry about it. First, if you eat two different protein sources in a day, any surplus in one compensates for another. A famous duo is rice and beans: individually these are not complete, while combined in the way these are typically eaten they are. If you eat a varied diet, and get enough protein in a day, the protein completeness will take care of itself.
Second, simply eating more of an "incomplete" protein can make it practically complete. For example, if you get the minimum amount of protein you need in a day from beans and nothing else, you would get only ~80% of the essential amino acid Cystine. In this example, eating 25% more beans provides sufficient Cystine and more total protein. Most people eat more than the minimum amount of protein, and they get it from more than one source, meaning they don't have to worry at all about protein completeness.
All foods on the chart have all nine essential amino acids, with one exception. Seitan in its pure form only has eight of the nine essential amino acids in good amounts. If you get the majority of protein from pure seitan, you can add beans and tofu or plenty of vegetables if you're not doing that already[8].
Digestibility
Another common topic is digestibility, which for most people is best considered a non-issue. While this is a valid area of research for experts, it has few practical implications for the wider public. The difference of digestibility is only a few percentages between the foods listed here in practice, and no differences in health outcomes are observed when eating the same amount of protein.
The lack of different health effects can be explained by how research on this has been done. A lot of research tests in animals, in particular rats and young pigs. These animals may be similar, but are not the same as humans. In addition, digestibility is normally measured for the foods' raw state. This doesn't align with how people normally eat these foods, and it is known cooking increases digestibility. Finally, the preferred method used to measure digestibility, DIAAS, has a bias towards complete proteins which has its own issues as described above [9].
Method
The food data was retrieved from different databases using Cronometer. For some, like beans, no generic entry was available. For these, three or four typical examples were selected and their values averaged. In the CSV file (provided below), the values of the macronutrients are percentages, saturated fat percentage is doubled so that 50% of calories from saturated fat draws a full red circle around the specific food. Fibre is provided in grams per 100 calories. The ternary graph is created using Python.
