What Fruit Is High in Protein? [Calories, Vitamins & Nutrients]

I’ve been looking to include more protein in my diet and in a more natural way than supplementing with powders etc.

I looked into the data on various fruits, including their full nutritional profile to help me make a more informed choice, and here’s what I found for the protein content in various fruits.

All measurements are per cup.

Other data I was interested in was what fruit has the most Vitamin C, the least calories, and the highest zinc.

Below, I will provide all the information as well as what foods are the highest in protein.

What Fruit Is High in Vitamin C?

A very influential chemist by the name of Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize for his work on determining the beneficial effects of vitamin C.

So, what fruit should you eat to get the most vitamin C?

From the info above you can see that certain fruits have a significantly higher amount of vitamin C compared to others.

For example, Guavas have nearly 4 times the vitamin C of oranges.

While some of the fruits on that list are vegetables. I included them so you can see how they compare.

Overall though it’s recommended to consume about 100mg of vitamin C per day.

Therefore, you can get your daily vitamin C requirements by only eating 1 orange.

Getting the same amount of vitamin C from vegetables requires around 2 cups.

Therefore, if you eat a salad then you’ll get most of the vitamin C you need in a day.

Especially combined with all the other food you eat. Certain literature has discussed the possibility of high doses of vitamin C being excellent for your health.

However, I encourage you to get to the bottom of the research yourself so you can make an informed decision.

Certain fruits contain more calories than others.

When you’re trying to lose weight it can be a good idea to switch to fruits that are low in calories.

That way you can eat more of them.

They are:

All calorie amounts are per cup. The difference in the number of calories between the first and tenth is not very large.

Therefore, any of the fruits on this list will be a good option.

Bananas and apples are some of the most common fruit. Apples are reasonably low in calories, but bananas contain around 132 calories per cup.

Therefore, they contain about double the calories of other fruit.

Bananas should be used strategically to give you a calorie boost when you need them.

For example, right before doing a workout. Or, right after your workout. Certain people are curious about whether sugar in fruit can make you fat.

I looked into a bunch of research about this topic and provided a summary.

Read it here, can sugar in fruit make you fat.

So, certain fruits are low in calories and to consume the least amount of calories it’s best to stick with these fruits.

But, if I want to branch out into other fruits, which ones have the most calories and therefore should be avoided?

You may know that plantain is quite different from a banana.

I wasn’t aware of the difference until I learned about them much later after coming across them at a market.

They are like big oversized bananas. However, they don’t taste like bananas. They taste more starchy and aren’t very sweet.

However, if you fry them they become sweet and turn a brown color.

Plantains are typically cooked and used in place of potato, sweet potato, yams, turnips, or pumpkin.

Zinc is known to be beneficial in your diet, and certain foods are higher in zinc than others.

So, what fruits have the most zinc?

Based on the amount of zinc in fruits, only avocados are realistic to eat your daily zinc requirements.

Therefore, if you suspect you have a zinc deficiency then you should consume seeds and nuts.

Seeds and nuts are known to have a high amount of zinc. Pistachio nuts and cashew nuts are well-known favorites.

As well as sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. Some contain around 30% of your zinc requirements in a ¼ of a cup.

It’s generally recommended to eat around 1 gram of protein per pound of muscle.

For example, if you want to be 200 pounds (90kg) of muscle you would eat around 200g of protein.

Therefore, knowing how much protein is in different foods is important to know.

So, then, what food has the highest protein?

I’ve included a table below that shows how much protein is in each and how much you would need to consume to reach 200g of protein per day as an example.

Other cuts of meat and types of meat, as well as fish, have a similar amount of protein to the veal and lamp in the table above.

However, in reality, you might mix and match your protein intake.

For example, you might eat a cup of soybeans with one meal, and then eat 1 medium-sized piece of meat with another meal.

Or, if you wanted to go completely vegetarian or vegan you could opt to eat maybe 100g of spirulina in a shake, and 1 cup of soybeans.

And then consume fruits and vegetables for the rest of your meals.

Beans are also traditionally quite high in protein.

They fall somewhere in the range of the lower protein meats such as tuna that have around 40g of protein per cup.

As you can see you would need to eat quite a bit more beans to reach your daily protein requirements.

Doing some rough math you would need to eat about 3-4 cups of beans alone to reach your entire protein limit for the day.

Most beans are sold in 400g cans but contain about 30% water. So, you get about 280g of beans.

Therefore, in each can of beans, you get about 50g of protein. Or, about 1/4 your protein requirement per can.

When you’re on the go, you want to eat something fast.

And a high protein snack is a great way to make sure you get enough protein throughout the day.

So, what are some high protein snacks?

You could store them in a small plastic container and carry them with you. Or, keep them in the fridge.

For a really healthy treat, eat them alongside a cup of herbal tea.

Other good options are dried meat or cured meat such as jerky.

Or, a freshly cooked piece of meat. Generally, it’s quite time-consuming to cook a piece of meat during the day.

So, a smoker is a great way to pre-cook meat to be eaten cold, and taste particularly good.

Other than that, you can mix up a quick protein shake.

A protein shake has roughly the same amount of protein per scoop as one cup of soybeans. Or a medium-sized steak.