The highest-protein foods in the Australian database

20 September 2026

Ranked by protein per 100 g, the Australian Food Composition Database puts these at the top:

Food	Protein per 100 g
Whey protein powder (>70%)	85.0 g
Vital wheat gluten	75.2 g
Textured vegetable protein	51.5 g
Soy flour	49.8 g
Nori, dried	46.7 g
Goat, lean, casseroled	43.6 g

Five of the six are dried or concentrated. That is what per-100 g rankings reward: remove the water and every other number per 100 g goes up.

Nori is the clearest case

Dried nori is 46.7 g of protein per 100 g, which sounds like a protein food. A sheet of nori weighs about 3 grams. You are getting 1.4 g of protein from it — roughly a quarter of one egg.

Nothing about the figure is wrong. It is just answering a question nobody asks, because nobody eats 100 g of nori.

What it looks like per serve

Take a plausible serving of each instead:

Food	Serve	Protein
Chicken breast, lean, raw	150 g	~34 g
Beef mince, regular, raw	150 g	~28 g
Whey protein powder	30 g scoop	~26 g
Tin of tuna in springwater	95 g drained	~25 g
Greek-style yoghurt	170 g tub	~17 g
Eggs	2 × 50 g	~12 g
Nori	1 sheet, 3 g	~1.4 g

The order changes completely. Whey drops behind plain chicken, and the seaweed disappears.

Using the rankings sensibly

Per 100 g is the right basis for comparing two foods of the same kind — two yoghurts, two mince varieties. It is the wrong basis for deciding what to eat, because it takes no account of how much of the thing ends up on the plate.

Every food page here has a portion box for exactly this: type in the grams you actually eat, and the panel recalculates.

Browse the full list at highest protein.