The most protein-dense everyday foods from Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and SuperValu — every food ranked by grams of protein per 100 calories, plus real barcode-matched product examples.
Grams of protein per 100g looks simple, but it hides how many calories you have to eat to get there. Protein per 100 calories tells you how efficiently a food delivers protein for the calories it costs — which is what actually matters when you're dieting. Below, every staple is ranked, and each food and store has its own page with the full breakdown.
For a separate, label-by-label look at selected protein powders, see the protein per 100 calories label comparison.
Want to compare your own shortlist? The Protein Swap Lab puts up to four labels on the same protein, calorie or portion basis.
In a small 2005 feeding study of 19 adults, increasing protein from 15% to 30% of calories cut spontaneous intake by 441 kcal a day, but that does not predict any one person's result.
| # | Food | Category | Protein / 100 kcal | Protein / 100g |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tinned tuna (in spring water) | Fish | 23.1g | 25g |
| 2 | Chicken breast | Poultry | 20.9g | 23g |
| 3 | Low-fat cottage cheese | Dairy | 16.7g | 12g |
| 4 | Tinned pink salmon | Fish | 15.5g | 22g |
| 5 | Lean beef mince (5% fat) | Meat | 15.3g | 21g |
| 6 | Turkey mince | Poultry | 14g | 20g |
| 7 | Natural Greek-style yoghurt | Dairy | 9.3g | 9g |
| 8 | Large eggs | Eggs | 8.7g | 12.5g |
| 9 | Red split lentils (dried) | Legumes | 7.3g | 24g |
| 10 | Tinned chickpeas | Legumes | 5.8g | 7g |
| 11 | Whole milk | Dairy | 5.2g | 3.4g |
| 12 | Porridge oats | Grains | 3g | 11g |
Standard reference nutrition figures, not prices. Compiled from label data and Open Food Facts, last checked 2026-08-16.
The most protein-dense real own-brand products in our 24,000-product Irish label database, across Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and SuperValu. A photo only appears where that product has a confirmed barcode match against Open Food Facts — never a guessed stock photo.
It's the grams of protein you get for every 100 calories a food contains -- the most honest way to compare foods for fat loss, because it accounts for how filling and how calorie-efficient the protein actually is. We calculate it directly from each food's protein and calories per 100g.
Lean poultry and fish like chicken breast and tinned tuna lead, followed by lean mince, cottage cheese and salmon. Dried staples like oats and lentils look high in protein per 100g but are far less protein-dense once you account for their calories. See the ranked table above for all 12 foods across Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and SuperValu.
We don't scrape live Irish supermarket prices, so we don't publish per-euro value claims we can't stand over. Protein and calorie figures are standard label data and don't drift the way prices do, which is why we rank by protein density instead.