Hello, I'm Monica Reinagel, the nutrition diva, here with your quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

And this week I have a great tip for getting more protein without

overloading on calories and I think this will be especially useful for those of

you on plant-based diets.

Just a few weeks ago, I talked about the concept of fiber density,

which is a way of looking at how much fiber of food contains per calorie.

And as we discovered, some high fiber foods are also relatively high in calories.

Choosing foods with a high fiber density, which have more fiber per calorie, can

help you increase your fiber intake without blowing out your calorie budget.

Well protein can present a similar dilemma especially for

vegetarians. In order to get the same amount of protein from black beans as I

would from chicken breast for example I'd have to eat three times as many calories.

It can be challenging to increase your protein intake using plant-based sources without taking

in more calories than you need, and this is where the concept of protein

density can really help.

Just as we did for fiber density, we can calculate the protein density of a food by dividing the protein by the calories.

Foods with a higher protein density will provide more protein per calorie.

So which foods have the most protein per calorie? Well not

surprisingly animal proteins like meat, fish, eggs, and chicken have a much

higher protein density than plant-based proteins like beans, nuts,

seeds and grains. Among the animal proteins that I compared, chicken breast, egg whites, and low-fat cottage cheese have the highest

protein density. Whole eggs, cheese, and other full-fat dairy products were among the lowest in protein density.

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