Nutrition
High-protein snacks: more protein for fewer calories
By
, founder and head coach at
Gains For Gamers
.
Published September 2026.
About an 8 minute read.
The short answer
The snacks that give you the most protein for the fewest calories are canned light tuna, lower-salt sliced turkey breast, plain nonfat Greek yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese: 12 to 20 grams of protein each, for under 100 calories in a normal snack serving. String cheese, edamame (young soy beans), roasted soy beans, boiled eggs and jerky (dried meat) come next, at 7 to 13 grams for 70 to 160 calories. Nuts, peanut butter, meat sticks and trail mix carry some protein inside a lot more fat or carbohydrate. If you are trying to lose weight, any of them saves you calories only when it replaces something bigger you would have eaten anyway.
This page is for healthy adults. Tuna, deli turkey and jerky each come with a rule, and so do pregnancy, food allergies and kidney disease; the list under the ranking says what they are.
Fifteen grams of protein can come from a 150 g pot of plain nonfat Greek yogurt, for about 90 calories. To get the same from peanuts, you need about 60 g of them, and about 350 calories.
The peanuts haven’t done anything wrong. They just come with a lot more calories.
If you’re trying to lose weight, or to reach how much protein you need a day without eating a lot more, that difference is worth knowing before you stock the cupboard. So every snack below comes with a normal serving, and its protein and calories side by side.
The most protein for the fewest calories
Each row shows a normal snack serving, with the protein and calories side by side. Start with the first group if you want the most protein for the fewest calories.
The most protein for the calories: 10 g or more of protein for every 100 calories
Snack, in a normal serving | Protein | Calories |
|---|---|---|
Tuna, light, canned in water, 107 g (a small can, drained) | 20 g | 96 |
Sliced turkey breast (deli turkey), the lower-salt kind, 55 g (2 oz) | 12 g | 60 |
Greek yogurt, plain and nonfat, 150 g (a single pot) | 15 g | 92 |
Cottage cheese, low-fat (2%), 113 g (half a cup) | 12 g | 95 |
Protein with fat or carbohydrate: 5 to 10 g of protein for every 100 calories
Snack, in a normal serving | Protein | Calories |
|---|---|---|
String cheese, a peelable stick of mozzarella, 28 g (one stick) | 7 g | 71 |
Edamame, young soy beans, shelled and cooked from frozen, 78 g (half a cup) | 9 g | 94 |
Roasted soy beans, sold as soy nuts, 28 g (1 oz) | 12 g | 126 |
Eggs, hard-boiled, 100 g (two US large eggs) | 13 g | 155 |
Beef jerky, 28 g (1 oz) | 9 g | 115 |
Cheddar or a similar firm cheese, 28 g (1 oz) | 6 g | 113 |
Mostly fat or carbohydrate: under 5 g of protein for every 100 calories
Snack, in a normal serving | Protein | Calories |
|---|---|---|
Peanuts, dry-roasted, 28 g (1 oz) | 7 g | 164 |
Smoked meat stick, 28 g (1 oz) | 6 g | 154 |
Pistachios, 28 g (1 oz) | 6 g | 160 |
Peanut butter, 32 g (2 tbsp) | 7 g | 191 |
Almonds, 28 g (1 oz) | 6 g | 167 |
Trail mix, 28 g (1 oz) | 4 g | 129 |
Potato chips (crisps), 110 g (a big bag, for comparison) | 7 g | 590 |
Weights are the food as you eat it. The protein and the calories are worked out for exactly those weights from the US Department of Agriculture’s food database, and brands differ, so go by the label on yours. Skyr, a thick Icelandic yogurt, carries about the same protein as the Greek yogurt row; check its calories on the pot. Protein bars and ready-to-drink shakes have no row because they vary too much to average.
A few of these snacks come with a rule of their own:
Tuna. Light tuna is one of the lower-mercury fish, and white (albacore) tuna carries more. If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, the FDA puts you at 225 to 340 g (8 to 12 oz) of lower-mercury fish a week. The NHS advises no more than four cans of tuna a week if you are pregnant or trying for a baby; it does not set a tuna limit for breastfeeding.
Deli turkey, jerky and meat sticks. All three are processed meat, meaning meat preserved by salting, curing or smoking, which the World Health Organization classifies as a cause of bowel cancer: every 50 g eaten a day raises the risk by about 18 percent of what it was. 55 g of deli turkey a day is already more than that 50 g.
Salt. 55 g of the lower-salt turkey or 28 g of jerky carries 400 to 500 mg of sodium, which is 1 to 1.25 g of salt, the figure a European label shows. The daily limit is 2,000 mg of sodium (5 g of salt) in the WHO’s advice and 2,300 mg in the US.
Pregnancy. Heat deli turkey until it steams before you eat it, because it can carry listeria, a food-poisoning bacterium.
Allergies. Cross off the rows made from a food you are allergic to, whether milk, eggs, fish, soy, peanuts or tree nuts such as almonds and pistachios, and read the ingredients on the rest: jerky can be made with soy sauce, which contains soy and wheat. The top two groups still have snacks you can eat.
Kidney disease. Your doctor sets your protein.
How to check any snack’s label
For a snack or a brand that isn’t in the tables, the label does the job, though not the words on the front. Two snacks can both say high protein and be nothing alike. On a US label the words mean about 10 g of protein in a standard serving of that kind of food, whatever else that serving holds. In the EU and the UK they mean that at least a fifth of the food’s calories come from protein, a line that jerky clears easily and cheddar only just.
The numbers on the back tell you more. Multiply the grams of protein by 10 and compare the answer with the calories, and you know which of the three groups the snack would join. On a European label the calories are the kcal figure beside the bigger kJ number, and both numbers have to come from the same column, per 100 g or per portion:
The same as the calories, or more: at least 40 percent of the calories come from protein, so it joins the first group.
Between half the calories and the same: protein with fat or carbohydrate alongside, the middle group. Half is where the EU and UK high-protein claim starts.
Under half: the bottom group, with most of the calories coming from fat or carbohydrate.
The test, on two snacks.
A 150 g pot of plain nonfat Greek yogurt: 15 grams of protein, times 10 is 150, against 92 calories. More than the calories, so it joins the first group.
28 g of almonds (1 oz): 6 grams of protein, times 10 is 60, against 167 calories. Under half, so almonds join the bottom group, with most of their calories coming from fat.
Why some popular protein snacks rank lower
Nuts, peanut butter, meat sticks and trail mix turn up on lists of protein snacks, and all of them land in the bottom group. They’re good food. They just bring a lot of calories along with their protein, because more than four fifths of those calories come from fat or carbohydrate.
Mostly fat
"Nuts and peanut butter are a protein snack."
28 g (1 oz) of peanuts, almonds or pistachios gives you 6 or 7 grams of protein for around 160 calories, and 32 g (2 tbsp) of peanut butter gives 7 grams for 191. For the same grams of protein, they come with about three times the calories of cottage cheese, or more.
Mostly fat
"A meat stick is basically jerky."
Jerky is dried meat, about a third protein by weight. A smoked meat stick is closer to a dry sausage: it carries more than twice as much fat as protein, which puts it in the bottom group of the ranking and jerky in the middle one, although the two sit side by side on the shelf.
Mostly fat
"Trail mix is a protein snack."
A 28 g handful gives about 4 grams of protein for 129 calories, and nearly all the rest is fat and carbohydrate. That makes it a good snack on a long hike, where you want a lot of energy in very little weight, and a poor one for protein.
Some are
"A protein bar is a protein snack."
Others are closer to a chocolate bar with protein added, and the label test tells you which: a bar with 20 grams of protein joins the first group at 200 calories or fewer. While you have the wrapper in your hand, look for sugar alcohols in the ingredients, listed as polyols on European labels, sweeteners whose names mostly end in -itol, such as maltitol and sorbitol. In larger amounts they can cause gas, stomach discomfort and loose stools, which is why some labels carry a warning that too much may have a laxative effect.
How to get 20 or 30 grams in a snack
For about 20 grams, eat a can of tuna, or pair any snack from the first group with a stick of string cheese. For about 30, eat a 300 g tub of plain nonfat Greek yogurt, or a can of tuna with a stick of string cheese. A ready-to-drink protein shake is the other route, and its label shows both the grams and the calories.
Snacks that reach about 20 or 30 grams
What it is | Protein | Calories |
|---|---|---|
A 300 g tub of plain nonfat Greek yogurt | 31 g | 183 |
107 g of drained canned tuna and a stick of string cheese | 27 g | 167 |
225 g of low-fat cottage cheese (a cup) | 25 g | 189 |
A 150 g pot of plain nonfat Greek yogurt and a stick of string cheese | 22 g | 163 |
107 g of drained canned tuna on its own | 20 g | 96 |
100 g of hard-boiled egg (two US large eggs) and a stick of string cheese | 19 g | 226 |
55 g of lower-salt deli turkey and a stick of string cheese | 19 g | 131 |
Every one of those comes in under 230 calories. The 300 g tub, at 31 grams, is the protein of a meal, and that is fine when the snack is standing in for one, on a day lunch gets skipped.
What is your snack replacing?
A protein snack does help with hunger. In small trials on young, healthy women, an afternoon yogurt with plenty of protein kept hunger lower than the same calories as a low-protein yogurt or as chocolate, and the women held off asking for dinner by 25 to 30 minutes.
The next question is whether you eat less later to make up for the snack. A little, but not enough. After a 160-calorie yogurt, dinner came out smaller than with no snack, but not by the full 160 calories, even with 24 grams of protein in the pot. In the other trial, the protein yogurt led to about 100 fewer calories at dinner than the same calories of chocolate; against crackers the result was less certain.
So if you’re trying to lose weight, a protein snack eaten on top of your day still adds calories. Eaten instead of something, it’s an easy trade:
The swap at the desk.
A big 110 g bag of chips: about 600 calories and 7 grams of protein.
A 300 g tub of plain nonfat Greek yogurt: 183 calories and 31 grams of protein.
Less than a third of the calories, for more than four times the protein.
Most of that swap happens before you sit down. As I tell clients, whatever you bring home will get eaten, so the bag of chips you never bought is the easiest one to skip. After that it helps to keep the yogurt closer to hand than anything else, which is why keeping protein within arm’s reach is one of the habits in how much protein you actually need.
Snacking at your desk
Start with distance. In a review of mostly laboratory studies, people ate less of a food when it was placed farther away, though the evidence is weak. It costs nothing to use anyway: keep the snacks that last without a fridge, such as jerky and roasted soy beans, within arm’s reach, bring the chilled ones out when you want them, and put anything like chips somewhere you have to stand up for.
Attention matters too, though its effect shows up later. In one trial, people who played a computer game over lunch felt less full afterward and, half an hour later, ate nearly twice as many cookies (biscuits, in the UK), by weight, as people who ate the same lunch without one. A 2026 review of the studies that measured this found the same pattern. So a meal eaten with your eyes on a screen may well be followed by a bigger snack.
That makes a break the best time for a snack, whether it comes between matches or between meetings, and the only sensible time for a pot of yogurt. Managing a spoon, a pot and a controller at once is getting a bit ambitious. If a snack does happen mid-game, pick one that needs one hand: string cheese, jerky, roasted soy beans or a shake with a lid.
Yogurt, cottage cheese and string cheese also have a time limit out of the fridge: US food safety advice gives them two hours, or one if the room is above 32°C (90°F), and after that they get thrown out.
On the go and late at night
A backpack or work bag has no fridge, which takes out the yogurt, cottage cheese, string cheese, deli turkey and eggs, and leaves the snacks that keep: a can of light tuna at 20 grams for 96 calories, roasted soy beans at 12 grams for 126, jerky at 9 grams for 115, and shakes and bars that need no fridge, which the label test sorts.
A late snack has a worse reputation than the research gives it. A 2015 review found that the harms shown in that research came from large meals, in people who eat most of their food at night. A small snack of around 150 calories before bed does not appear to be harmful, and the same review suggests it may even help the body build new muscle protein and help the heart and metabolism.
So late at night, the thing to watch is the size of the snack. Our rule for cravings comes with the cupboards: once what you want less of has left the house, you can still have everything you want, when you want it, so you wait until the craving is real. If it is, and protein is what you want, a 150 g pot of plain nonfat Greek yogurt or 113 g of low-fat cottage cheese (half a cup) comes in under 100 calories.
What we see with clients
There are no bad foods, but you can have bad eating habits. Healthy habits start in the supermarket, so for clients who are starting out we change what is in the house, in a set order:
In the first month nothing leaves, because we want the usual food available while a client learns to count calories, so they get a true picture of what they eat.
In month two, what the client wants less of leaves the cupboard, and fruit, favorite vegetables, lean protein and healthy snacks go in to replace it.
In month three, the client shops from a list every time.
And because the protein target we set is a day’s total, a snack counts toward it exactly as a meal does, and clients split it into snacks however suits them. Setting up the protein target and the cupboards around each client’s own day is what we do at Gains For Gamers.
Check the calories next to the protein. If you’re trying to lose weight, let the snack replace something rather than join it.
Questions we get asked
What are the top 10 protein snacks?
For protein against calories, in order: canned light tuna, lower-salt deli turkey, plain nonfat Greek yogurt, low-fat cottage cheese, string cheese, edamame, roasted soy beans, hard-boiled eggs, beef jerky and cheddar. The first four give 10 grams or more of protein for every 100 calories; the other six give 5 to 10 grams, with fat or carbohydrate alongside.
What snack is highest in protein?
Of the snacks on this page, canned light tuna gives the most protein for its calories: 20 grams for 96 in a small drained can, with lower-salt deli turkey and plain nonfat Greek yogurt close behind. By weight, roasted soy beans lead at about 43 percent protein, then beef jerky at about a third. Ready-to-drink shakes vary too much to rank, so check the label on yours.
Which high-protein snacks are low in carbs?
Canned light tuna, hard-boiled eggs, string cheese and cheddar carry about 1 gram of carbohydrate or less in the servings above, and deli turkey about 2. Jerky carries about 3, plain nonfat Greek yogurt and low-fat cottage cheese about 5 from the milk, edamame about 7 and roasted soy beans about 8.
Do I need protein snacks if I eat enough protein at meals?
No. What counts most is how much protein you eat across the day, and a snack is one way to reach your daily target, not a requirement. If your meals already get you there, a snack only has to be something you enjoy and can fit in; if they fall short, a snack from the top group closes the gap for the fewest calories. The calculator in how much protein you actually need gives you the target.
Does gaming make you eat more?
It can. In one small trial of teenage boys, lunch after an hour of video games was about 80 calories bigger than lunch after an hour of sitting, they felt no hungrier, and they did not make up for it later in the day. That is not a reason to stop playing, only a reason to decide what is within reach before the session starts.
Next up
This page is one of a series on protein. Here is the rest of it, and the calculator that goes with it.
Learn
How much protein do you actually need?
This page is by Daniel, founder and head coach at Gains For Gamers. We’re coaches who game. Every article is written from the research and read by a coach before it goes up; here is how we do that.
Sources
U.S. Department of Agriculture. FoodData Central, the food composition database behind every serving on this page (SR Legacy and Foundation Foods). fdc.nal.usda.gov.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Advice about Eating Fish: 8 to 12 ounces a week of lower-mercury fish in pregnancy and breastfeeding; canned light tuna a Best Choice, albacore a Good Choice. FDA.
NHS. Foods to avoid in pregnancy: no more than 4 cans of tuna a week. NHS.
International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Health Organization. Q&A on the carcinogenicity of the consumption of red meat and processed meat, 2015. Processed meat covers meat transformed by salting, curing, fermentation or smoking. WHO.
World Health Organization. Sodium reduction, fact sheet, 2026: adults less than 2,000 mg of sodium, under 5 g of salt, a day. WHO. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sodium in Your Diet: less than 2,300 mg a day. FDA.
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Nutrient content claims, 21 CFR 101.54: “high” is 20 percent or more of the Daily Value per reference amount customarily consumed, counted on protein corrected for quality; the Daily Value for protein is 50 g, 21 CFR 101.9(c)(7). eCFR.
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This page is general information from coaches, not medical advice. It is written for healthy adults. If you have kidney or liver disease, are pregnant or breastfeeding, are under 18, or have a history of disordered eating, talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian before changing your intake.