I’m fascinated by food marketing and love to do comparisons.
This is my own un-scientific standard by comparing certain foods to a pound of grass-fed beef.
Grass-fed ground beef has become almost ubiquitous and it is a convenient and reliable source of protein that can be found in almost any grocery store.
I prefer to get it from local farms but it is not always available. Lately, I have been getting an Australian sourced product, which is decent.
Snack chips made out of beans.
I recently came across this packaged snack food with the bold writing touting the 4 grams of protein. I couldn’t help but wonder what the protein source was.
It turns out the protein source is from navy beans. My mom used to make large pots of navy beans when I was a kid. Ours contained large amounts of ham and a bone to go with it. I don’t think these chips contain any animal products.
Each 1 oz serving of navy bean chips contains 4 g protein. Each bag costs 2.69, there are 6 servings in a bag for a total of 6 oz and a total of 24 g of vegetable protein. They have to add rice bran to complete the protein, but it is still an inferior protein.
I’m all for healthier snacks and I commend this company for trying to make something reasonably healthy, but my point is to show how the numbers don’t lie and it comes down to quality and value. There is obviously more value in a pound of meat although it may not be as much fun to eat, and not nearly as messy.
One pound (16 ounces) of ground beef is about four servings. There are 21 g of high-quality protein in each serving for a total of 84 grams of protein and 17 grams of fat, all for $6!
What does protein cost per gram? Beef – It turns out that grass-fed ground beef breaks down to about 7 cents per gram of protein, whereas the bean chips are over 10 cents per gram.
There is also the convenience factor of popping a chip right out of the bag, where ground beef should be lightly cooked.
When you consider the health benefits and cost of our champ, ground beef, it really is not a fair comparison.
Thinking of going carnivore or carnivore-ish? Sign up for my tribe and download my carnivore cheat sheet. It contains many popular animal-based foods and their vitamin and mineral content. These details are necessary to know when adapting to an animal-based diet. I will be expanding this so stay in touch.
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I plan to make this a series of “Who would win”, with other challengers challenging the champ, ground beef.
Check out the best gateway book to eating carnivore written by Dr. Paul Saladino.
