The best proteins to eat are those your body can fully break down and use: eggs, poultry, fish, dairy, beef, and legumes paired with grains. Protein quality depends not just on how many grams are on the label, but on the mix of amino acids inside and how well your gut absorbs them. Here’s how to pick the right sources for your goals and diet.
What Makes a Protein “Good”
Your body needs nine essential amino acids from food. It can’t make them on its own. A protein source is considered high quality when it delivers all nine in the right proportions and your digestive system can actually absorb them. Scientists measure this using a score called DIAAS (Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score), which rates how completely a food’s amino acids are digested and used.
Animal proteins consistently score highest. Whey protein isolate, for example, delivers more than double the minimum requirement for almost every essential amino acid, including leucine, the amino acid most responsible for triggering muscle repair. Whole eggs, chicken breast, and beef score similarly well. Plant proteins score lower, not because they’re bad, but because each plant source tends to be short on one or two key amino acids. Soy comes closest to animal protein with a DIAAS of 86%, while almonds score around 38 to 45%.
Top Animal Protein Sources
If you eat animal products, these are your most efficient options:
- Eggs. Often called the gold standard of protein quality. One large egg has about 6 grams of protein with a near-perfect amino acid profile. The yolk contains roughly half the protein plus most of the vitamins, so eating whole eggs gives you more nutritional value than whites alone.
- Chicken and turkey breast. A cooked 3-ounce serving provides around 26 grams of protein with very little fat. Poultry is one of the most versatile, affordable high-quality proteins available.
- Fish and shellfish. Salmon, tuna, shrimp, and cod all deliver 20 to 25 grams of protein per 3-ounce serving. Fatty fish like salmon and sardines add omega-3 fats, which benefit heart and brain health.
- Beef and pork. Lean cuts like sirloin, tenderloin, or pork loin provide 22 to 26 grams per serving. Red meat is also one of the richest sources of iron and B12, nutrients that are harder to get from other foods.
- Greek yogurt and cottage cheese. A cup of Greek yogurt has 15 to 20 grams of protein. Cottage cheese packs even more, around 25 grams per cup. Both are easy to eat as snacks or mix into meals.
- Whey protein. Derived from milk, whey is absorbed faster than most whole foods and scores exceptionally high on every amino acid metric. It’s practical for post-workout recovery or adding protein to meals without much extra volume.
Best Plant Proteins and How to Combine Them
Plant proteins are incomplete individually, meaning each one is low in at least one essential amino acid. But this is easy to work around. The key is combining foods that fill each other’s gaps. Beans are low in methionine, while grains are low in lysine. Eat both over the course of a day and your body gets the full set. You don’t need to eat them in the same meal.
Here are the most practical plant protein sources and their best complements:
- Lentils and beans (black beans, chickpeas, kidney beans): 15 to 18 grams per cooked cup. Pair with rice, bread, or tortillas.
- Tofu and tempeh: 10 to 20 grams per half cup, depending on firmness. Soy is the highest-quality plant protein, with a DIAAS of 86%, and contains all nine essential amino acids in reasonable amounts.
- Quinoa: 8 grams per cooked cup. One of the few plant foods that contains all essential amino acids on its own, though in smaller total quantities than legumes or meat.
- Nuts and seeds (almonds, peanuts, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds): 5 to 10 grams per ounce. Low in lysine, so pair with beans or lentils.
- Whole grains (oats, brown rice, whole wheat bread): 3 to 8 grams per serving. Low in lysine and threonine, so pair with any legume.
A diet heavy in plant protein does require some attention. When researchers modeled a plant-forward diet similar to the planetary health diet, the overall protein quality scored a DIAAS of just 71 to 76%. Adding higher-quality sources like soy, dairy, or eggs brought that up to 88 to 94%. If you eat fully vegan, eating a variety of legumes, grains, nuts, and soy products daily covers your bases without overthinking individual meals.
How Much Protein You Actually Need
The official RDA is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, which works out to about 55 grams daily for a 150-pound person. That number prevents deficiency, but it’s likely not enough for optimal health, especially as you age or if you’re physically active.
Adults over 65 benefit from significantly more. Research on preventing age-related muscle loss recommends 1.0 to 1.2 grams per kilogram per day as a baseline for older adults, with intakes up to 1.5 grams per kilogram for those already losing muscle mass. At least half of that should come from high-quality sources like the ones listed above. For a 160-pound older adult, that translates to roughly 73 to 109 grams per day rather than the 58 grams the standard RDA would suggest.
People who strength train or do regular intense exercise generally aim for 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram, though some athletes push higher. The more relevant question for most people isn’t the daily total but how it’s spread across meals.
Spreading Protein Across Your Day
Your body can only use so much protein at once for building and repairing muscle. Research shows that muscle protein synthesis maxes out at around 30 grams of protein in a single sitting. Eating a 60-gram steak doesn’t trigger twice the muscle repair of a 30-gram portion. The excess gets used for energy or other functions, but it won’t build more muscle.
This means front-loading all your protein into dinner, which is common in Western diets, isn’t ideal. A better approach is eating 25 to 35 grams of protein at each of your three main meals. People who hit that threshold at multiple meals throughout the day tend to have more leg lean mass and greater muscle strength than those who cluster their protein in one large meal. A practical pattern might look like three eggs with toast at breakfast (about 24 grams), a chicken salad at lunch (30 grams), and salmon with quinoa at dinner (35 grams).
Cooking Methods That Preserve Protein Quality
How you prepare food matters. Soaking dried beans and lentils before cooking reduces compounds called phytates, which can interfere with mineral absorption. Cooking at moderate heat preserves amino acid availability better than charring or deep-frying. For plant proteins specifically, pressure cooking and boiling are the most effective preparation methods for breaking down antinutritive compounds and improving digestibility.
With animal proteins, the protein content stays relatively stable across cooking methods. Grilling, baking, and pan-searing all work fine. The main thing to avoid is excessive processing. Heavily processed meats like hot dogs and deli meats add sodium, preservatives, and saturated fat without improving protein quality. Choosing minimally processed whole food sources, whether animal or plant, consistently gives you the best nutritional return per gram of protein.