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Ranking foods by protein per 100 calories

The viewer learns to judge a protein source by its cost in calories, not by whether it is "a protein food".

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The hook

“Everyone knows which foods have protein. Almost nobody knows what it costs.”

First four seconds. It states the surprise outright rather than promising one, because a promise is a reason to scroll and a surprise is a reason to stay.

Why this topic is worth 80 seconds

Protein per 100 kcal cuts through the “high-protein” marketing on packaging. A protein bar advertising 20 g of protein in a 220 kcal wrapper is exactly average by this measure.

The idea works on a plate too. It is why a chicken breast wins against a chicken tikka wrap even before the sauce arrives.

The reason the ratio matters more than the raw gram figure is satiety. Calories that arrive with more protein leave the plate feeling like a meal, not a snack.

Protein per 100 grams is the figure everybody quotes and it is the wrong one for anyone eating in a deficit. What matters when calories are limited is how much protein a hundred calories buys you, and that ranking looks very different.

It also quietly corrects a common error: bread and nuts do contain protein, and are still poor ways to reach a protein target, because of what comes attached.

The storyboard

Read it as a script

The voiceover column, in order, is the whole piece:

Everyone knows which foods have protein. Almost nobody knows what it costs.

Rank foods by protein per hundred grams and you get the list you expect. Meat, eggs, fish at the top.

Now ask a different question: how much protein does a hundred calories buy? The list reshuffles, and some things you thought of as protein fall a long way.

If you are eating less, every hundred calories is a decision. A food that gives you fifteen grams of protein for that hundred is doing a completely different job from one that gives you three.

This is not a ranking of good and bad food. Nuts and olive oil score terribly here and belong in the diet anyway. It is one axis, and it is the axis that matters when calories are tight.

Every food page on TempoLife carries both figures.

Every number this script shows

The leaderboard that re-sorts itself. Both rankings, from the same rows.

Nothing in the storyboard above quotes a figure directly. The beats refer to numbers and this table supplies them, so a script written months ago cannot go stale against its own data.

Production notes

• The re-sorting animation is the payoff. Build it as a real reorder, not a cut between two static lists.
• Keep the nuance beat in. Cutting it turns a useful ranking into a food-shaming video.
• Shoot the plates at identical calories, not identical volume — that is the comparison being made.

Closing card

Compare any two foods at tempolife.app/calories

General information, not medical advice. These scripts describe averages across populations; nothing in them is a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation.

Source: Figures computed from the TempoLife food database (USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy) and the 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities · checked 2026-09-02

What the script points at

• Protein basics
• Chicken breast
• Macro calculator

Other scripts

All scripts · Listen to the guides