I analyzed 100+ food items to find the cheapest protein sources - Jacked Nerds Issue #018

It’s no secret now that grocery prices have been on the rise for the past few years. That means not only keeping our fridges stocked is getting more expensive, keeping up the gainz is also getting more expensive. For our family of four, I used to walk out of Costco spending $200 not even that long ago. Now, it’s $350 minimum. $500+ if I’m not paying attention.

And this isn’t just based on vibes. According to Grocery Tracker’s Inflation Tracker, prices on common grocery items in Canada have gone up nearly 20% since May 1, 2022. In the US, food prices have risen by an average of 2.6% per year — that’s a cumulative 26% increase over the past decade.

All of this got me thinking:

So I recently pulled pricing and macronutrient data for over 100 everyday grocery items, using No Frills (a Canadian discount grocery chain) as the source and Perplexity for nutrition data. Then I also ran some fun (and kind of ridiculous) linear optimization exercises to find the most cost-effective way to hit specific calorie and macro targets.

If you’re curious about the numbers or want to geek out with me, I included my Google Sheet with the full data set here. In it I also explained my approach and methodology.

Now for the insights💡.

Ranked by highest grams of protein per dollar.

Unsurprisingly, these are all carbs. Carbs are cheap (esp. when bought in bulk) and legumes like lentils and chickpeas are decent protein sources.

The "problem" is that none of these are complete protein sources on their own. So if your goal is muscle building, you’d have to find other ways to complete the protein sources here for complete protein synthesis. A classic example: eat grains with chickpeas to make up for the methionine chickpeas lack. This is why pita and hummus is such a great (and delicious) combo.

Russet potato, oats and pasta are those classic "anything can be a protein source if you eat enough" foods. Potatoes only have about 8g of protein per 100g, but makes 3rd on this list given how cheap potatoes are.

Complete protein defined as a complete protein contains all nine essential amino acids, which the human body cannot produce on its own and must obtain from food. Animal products like meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy are complete proteins. Some plant-based foods, including soy, quinoa, and buckwheat, are also complete protein sources.

Ranked by highest grams of protein per dollar.

Canned fishes top this list, as canned products are generally cheaper than their fresh counterparts.

Chicken drumsticks is the only fresh animal protein source on this list as it's one of the cheaper cuts.

Quinoa is a decent protein source and has a healthy amount of fibre. So dollar for dollar, it can replace chicken drumsticks as a solid protein source (macros targets aside).

Ranked by highest grams of protein per 100g of food.

The biggest surprise by far for me is cheese strings — 29g of protein per 100g!!!

Cheese strings have never really been on my radar as a serious protein source, mainly because it’s a highly processed food, but also I’ve never considered it as something I’d eat multiples of to help hit my daily protein targets (a single cheese string is ~20g in weight, so I’d have to eat five to get 29g of protein). But eating a couple to get 10 to 12g of protein is definitely a good snack option.

Worth mentioning that after lentils, the next 10 are all within 4g of protein of each other — all have 20+g of protein per 100g.

In order:

Ranked by highest grams of protein per 100g of food.

Whey protein tops this list as it’s still by far the most economical protein source gram for gram. Hopefully that’s not a surprise.

Ranked by highest grams of fibre per dollar.

Truly no surprises here.

As I was doing this, I thought to myself : “What if I reversed the question? What if I set a daily budget, and tried to figure out what food I need to hit certain macros?”

So I built a simple linear optimization model with this data, and here are some example outputs.

Example 1:

If your goal is 1,200 calories per day, 100g protein, 125 carbs, 33g of fat, you can hit these targets with only four foods and a budget of $2.51 CAD a day.

Example 2:

If you have exactly $10 per day, you can hit the same above targets with these foods:

To be clear, I don’t think this particular type of diet is fun or sustainable, so don't take this as recommendations. This is merely to show that it is mathematically possible, especially if you are looking for budget ways to hit your nutrition goals.

Alright, that’s enough nerdy content for one day 😆.

Drop me a comment if you want to nerd out on any of this.

Catch y’all in the next one! ✌️