The Right Whey to Calculate Protein
A Bite-Size Read for Your Health and Your Waistline
Reading nutrition labels has never been easy. It can even be overwhelming when assessing how many calories, total fats, carbs, and protein we need in a day and then how each food we choose fits into that. Today we’ll take a look at protein. As it’s important for every cell in the body, we hear a lot about protein: plant sources, animal sources, and controversy over whether we get enough in the Standard American Diet.
As a general rule, I recommend men eat 6–8 ounces (oz) and women 4–6 ounces of protein at each meal. For everyone, snacks with 2–3 ounces of protein will be satisfying, provide the energy we need and minimize crashing blood sugar. As I did, we most often think of protein in terms of ounces but those nutrition labels on packaged foods quantify it in grams. As if this wasn’t tricky enough…right?!
What’s the easiest way to translate grams to ounces? The conversion commonly used is 7 grams(g) of protein is equivalent to 1oz of cooked meat. But I hear your mind going…1oz is 28.3495g, not 7! To understand, 23.3495 is net weight. That’s not what the nutrition facts are telling us. Instead, think of it as an ounce of cooked meat gives the body about 7g of protein like fish or chicken. This conversion gives us a way to wrap our heads around food labels.
Let’s put it into action. What’s a popular non-meat option for protein whether as a snack or in meals? Cheese! A package of Sargento Sliced Baby Swiss has a net weight of 7oz with 11 servings. If you divide 11 by 7, we get a serving that’s about .63 ounces net weight. Looking at the nutrition facts, that serving gives us 5g of protein. And that is because we are starting to look at the amount of protein in the food, not just the net weight.
After analyzing our nutrition labels, we can begin to think of food in the context of creating a snack or a meal. So since a quality snack is 2–3oz of protein, we’re going to need a little more than 1 slice of this cheese or maybe it’s 1 serving of the cheese and something else.
Let’s review another popular snack option: the protein bar. My personal favorite is the Think Thin Creamy Peanut Butter Protein Bar. The package is 10.5oz and contains 5 bars. So each bar has a net weight of 2.1oz. Reading the label, it gives us 20g of protein. When we divide 20 by 7, we get a number close to 3. Now we know this bar has almost 3oz of protein, which makes it a quality snack size of protein all by itself!
Now that we are starting to understand protein in ounces derived from the grams on the label, which is different from the net weight of the food, there are some occasions where the net weight and the protein might be closer. A can of tuna fish, for example, will generally have a net weight and protein content pretty close to equal, because the only ingredient is the tuna (and maybe a little water).
Now that we understand the 7g to 1oz rule-of-thumb, evaluating how much protein a packaged food offers us is a lot simpler. So whether you’re counting macros or simply looking to make healthier choices with packaged foods, go forth and conquer. You’re now a pro at counting protein!
