This Food Just Beat Steak, Salmon, & Eggs For Best Protein

If protein was being quiet ten years ago, it’s definitely screaming now. PROTEIN. You can barely walk down a grocery aisle without encountering something that’s been given an extra helping of the stuff. Protein bars, protein chips, protein coffee… there’ll be protein-infused fruit next. Or maybe there already is. I don’t know. I can’t keep up.

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And when we think about getting enough protein, foods like steak, salmon, and eggs tend to get most of the attention. Which is fair enough. They’re all good sources of it.

But according to a new analysis, there’s another food that deserves a little more recognition. And it’s probably not the one you’d expect. Tofu has come out on top in a ranking of 20 common protein sources, beating everything from beef and salmon to eggs and cheese.

Yep, you heard me. Tofu. The humble block of soy that, depending on how you cook it, can either be absolutely delicious or taste like you’ve made a terrible mistake.

Why Was Tofu Ranked The Best Protein Source?

The ranking comes from Chris Macdonald, a University of Cambridge researcher and founder of the Better Protein Institute, who developed a scoring system called the BPI Score.

Rather than looking at how much protein a food contains, Macdonald wanted to assess how different protein sources stack up when you consider the bigger picture. That means looking at things like nutritional value, affordability, availability, and environmental impact. Because getting a decent amount of protein is one thing, but how much it costs and what goes into producing it are worth considering, too.

Each of the 20 foods was assessed using two categories: a People Score, which considers factors like saturated fat, sodium, cholesterol, cost, availability, and whether a food contains all nine essential amino acids, and a Planet Score, which looks at greenhouse gas emissions, land use, freshwater use, and water pollution.

To keep things consistent, the researcher compared each food based on 100 grams of protein rather than 100 grams of the food itself.

Tofu scored 36 out of a possible 40 points, including a perfect 16 out of 16 for environmental impact. It also earned 20 out of 24 points in the People category, making it the highest-scoring food overall.

One particularly interesting comparison was with beef. Producing 100 grams of protein from tofu was associated with around 0.61 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 64.19 kilograms for beef. That’s quite a difference.

Tofu is also a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids. So while it might not have the same reputation as a steak or a piece of salmon, it’s certainly holding its own. I’ll admit, tofu isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when I’m craving a protein-heavy meal. But those numbers make a pretty convincing case for giving it more attention.

What Other Foods Made The Top Of The List?

Tofu wasn’t the only plant-based food to perform well. Chia seeds, beans, and quinoa rounded out the top four. Chia seeds scored particularly well on environmental measures, while beans performed strongly when it came to sodium, saturated fat, and freshwater use.

Quinoa also made the top four, although it was unfortunately the most expensive protein source in the analysis. So being good for you and the planet doesn’t necessarily mean being good for your wallet.

At the other end of the ranking were mozzarella, lamb, beef, and cheddar.

That doesn’t mean those foods are suddenly bad choices or that you need to abandon your fistfuls of shredded cheese. The ranking considers several factors beyond protein content, and some animal-based foods performed particularly well in individual categories. For example, cod had the lowest saturated fat content of all 20 foods, while lentils were the cheapest source per 100 grams of protein.

There are also a few limitations worth mentioning. The analysis was conducted by a single researcher, and the grocery prices came from UK stores, so the affordability results won’t necessarily reflect what you’d pay in the US. It’s also a proposed scoring system, rather than a definitive verdict on what everyone should eat.

Still, I think the results are interesting. Particularly because protein conversations so often revolve around meat, eggs, and whichever snack has managed to squeeze another 20 grams onto its packaging. I’m not about to give up steak or salmon and I doubt anyone needs to. But I might start giving tofu a little more credit.

Preferably crispy, with plenty of sauce. I’m willing to embrace the winning protein, but I’m not eating it plain.