Satiety Per Calorie Calculator
Enter the macros, fiber, water content, and serving size of any food to see how much fullness it delivers per calorie — then check it against the ten most filling foods per calorie below.
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Top 10 Highest Satiety-Per-Calorie Foods
Every whole food in our database, scored per 100g with the same formula the calculator uses, highest first. Foods we have written about link through to their article.
| # | Food | Calories | Protein (g) | Fiber (g) | Satiety score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shrimp | 100 | 24 | 0 | 51.7 |
| 2 | Tuna (canned in water) | 113 | 26 | 0 | 49.2 |
| 3 | Turkey Breast | 125 | 29 | 0 | 49.1 |
| 4 | Pork Tenderloin | 104 | 21 | 0 | 44.1 |
| 5 | Bison | 110 | 22 | 0 | 43.5 |
| 6 | Tilapia | 128 | 26 | 0 | 43.3 |
| 7 | Whey Protein Powder | 379 | 80 | 0 | 42.3 |
| 8 | Chicken Breast | 156 | 31 | 0 | 41.7 |
| 9 | Cod Fillet | 78 | 18 | 0 | 40.1 |
| 10 | Lentils (cooked) | 120 | 9 | 7.9 | 31.2 |
All values per 100 g. Green is 20 and above, amber 8–19.9, red below 8. Where we have an article on a food, its name links to it.
Nine of the ten are lean animal protein, and the reason is arithmetic rather than ideology: protein is weighted heaviest in the formula, and these foods carry it with almost no calorie ballast attached. Shrimp tops the list because 100g of it is 24g of protein, 74g of water, and about 100 calories — there is nothing else in there to divide by.
The tenth is the interesting one. Cooked lentils score 31.2on almost no protein by comparison, because 7.9g of fiber per 100g is weighted exactly as heavily as protein is. It is also the clearest case of the two frameworks disagreeing — lentils sit below Naiman’s 1.0 line on the PE ratio and in the top ten here.
Whey protein powder at 42.3deserves an asterisk. The formula scores macros, not food form, and a scoop stirred into water is a drink rather than a meal — plenty of people find it leaves them hungry an hour later in a way that 100g of cod does not. Treat it as a top-up for a protein target rather than a base food.
See all 63 foods ranked by satiety per calorie
Where the Everyday Foods Land
The top of any ranking is lean protein, which is not much help if you were asking about breakfast. Here is the same score applied to the foods people actually ask about, best to worst.
| Food | Calories | Protein (g) | Fiber (g) | Satiety score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low-fat Cottage Cheese | 71 | 12 | 0 | 28.1 |
| Egg White | 49 | 11 | 0 | 26.4 |
| Nonfat Greek Yogurt | 61 | 10 | 0 | 24.3 |
| Large Egg | 155 | 13 | 0 | 19.2 |
| Broccoli | 43 | 2.8 | 2.6 | 15.3 |
| Whole Wheat Bread | 252 | 12 | 6 | 15.0 |
| Oats (dry) | 387 | 13 | 10 | 12.0 |
| Banana | 99 | 1.1 | 2.6 | 11.2 |
| Russet Potato | 81 | 2.1 | 1.3 | 10.8 |
| Almonds | 613 | 21 | 12 | 10.8 |
| Peanut Butter | 630 | 25 | 6 | 9.8 |
| White Rice (cooked) | 126 | 2.7 | 0.4 | 7.6 |
All values per 100 g. Green is 20 and above, amber 8–19.9, red below 8. Where we have an article on a food, its name links to it.
Three things fall out of this table. Cottage cheese and egg whites beat whole eggs by a wide margin, because 11g of fat carries 99 of a whole egg’s 155 calories without adding anything the formula rewards. Oats look weak at 12.0only because the database stores them dry, at 387 calories per 100g — nobody eats 100g of dry oats, and a normal 40g serving is 155 calories of a food with 10g of fiber per 100g behind it.
And the bottom of the table is not a list of bad foods. Almonds and peanut butter are nutritious; they are simply 600-plus calories per 100g, which is a lot of energy to spend on a moderate amount of fullness. White rice scores lowest here for the opposite reason — it is neither dense nor filling, just starch with the fiber milled out.
What Is a Good Satiety Score?
The calculator returns one number and a colour. Here is what the colour means, calibrated against the foods above rather than picked out of the air:
- High satiety — 20 and above. Lean meat, fish, seafood, egg whites, nonfat dairy, legumes. These are the foods a plate gets built around.
- Medium satiety — 8 to 20. Most vegetables, fruit, whole grains, whole eggs, full-fat dairy. Real volume, real nutrition, less fullness per calorie than the band above.
- Low satiety — under 8. Refined starch, nuts, oils, butter, sweets. Calories that do not buy much fullness. Nothing here is banned; these are usually the accompaniment rather than the anchor.
Two things the number is not telling you. The first is portion size. The score is per 100g and scale-invariant, so 100g of cod and 300g of cod score identically — a high score is not permission to stop counting calories, it is a reason the counting gets easier.
The second is the denominator clamp. Energy density divides the score, but it is floored at 100 calories per 100g, which is why spinach at 30 calories does not run away with the ranking. Without the clamp, any near-zero-calorie food would post an enormous number for being made mostly of water. With it, the leaders are foods that deliver something as well as costing little.
How Satiety Per Calorie Compares to the PE Ratio
Both numbers come out of Dr. Ted Naiman’s work and they answer different questions. The PE ratio asks how much protein a food carries against its non-protein energy. Satiety per calorie asks how much fullnessit buys per calorie — protein is the biggest input, but fiber, water, and energy density all pull on it.
| Food (per 100g) | PE ratio | Satiety score | What the gap says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | 8.6 | 41.7 | They agree. Lean protein wins on both, always. |
| Lentils (cooked) | 0.72 | 31.2 | The PE ratio counts fiber only as a deduction; satiety per calorie rewards it outright. |
| Broccoli | 0.58 | 15.3 | Fails the PE line on 2.8g of protein, still earns its place on volume and water. |
| Cheddar cheese | 0.73 | 12.9 | Both mark it down. 402 calories per 100g is what 33g of fat costs. |
| Almonds | 0.36 | 10.8 | Protein and fiber both present, both swamped by 613 calories. |
Use both. The PE ratio is faster — two numbers off a label, ten seconds at the shelf — and it is the one Naiman built the diet around. Satiety per calorie is the better lens for whole meals, for plant foods, and for the question of whether what you just built will actually hold you until dinner.
About the Satiety Per Calorie Score
This score is rooted in Dr. Ted Naiman’s Satiety Per Calorie framework — the follow-up to The PE Diet. The premise: foods that fill you up cheapest are dense in protein, fiber, and water — and light on energy density. Our summary of Naiman’s PE ratio and Satiety Per Calorie covers what the book adds to the ratio and where the evidence for it sits.
The Formula
We normalize every component to a 100g basis, then weight protein and fiber heavily, water lightly, and divide by energy density:
score = (protein_per_100g × 2 + fiber_per_100g × 2 + water_per_100g × 0.05)
÷ max(1, calories_per_100g ÷ 100)The score is rounded to one decimal place. What is a good satiety score breaks the bands down in full.
Protein carries the most weight in the formula because it is the most filling macronutrient per calorie — which is also why a higher-protein diet tends to reduce hunger on the same calories. For how much of it to aim for in a day, see how much protein per day.
If you only want that part of the picture — how much protein a food buys you per calorie, with no fiber or water in the mix — the Protein-to-Calorie Ratio Calculator scores it on its own. To take the four levers to the table rather than the spreadsheet, the PFFV Calculator scores a whole meal on Protein, Fiber, Fluid, and Volume out of 100.
Knowing which of your regulars score badly is only half the job. The Satiety Swap tool takes a low-scoring food you actually want and returns higher-satiety substitutes at the same calorie level, which is the version of this page you can act on at the supermarket.
Zero-calorie drinks never make this map at all, because they buy no fullness through food — a point that trips people up with black coffee, whose appetite effect is real but small: is coffee good for weight loss? covers where the caffeine helps and where the milk and syrup quietly don’t.
Frequently Asked Questions
What food has the highest satiety per calorie?
Lean seafood and poultry. Scored per 100g, shrimp leads at 51.7 — 24g of protein, 74g of water, and about 100 calories — followed by canned tuna in water at 49.2 and skinless turkey breast at 49.1. Cod, tilapia, pork tenderloin, bison, and chicken breast all land in the 40s. The only plant food in the top ten is cooked lentils at 31.2, where fiber does the work protein does elsewhere.
Is satiety per calorie the same as PE ratio?
No. The PE ratio from Dr. Ted Naiman's The P:E Diet divides grams of protein by grams of non-protein energy (fat + carbs − fiber), so it only sees two things. Satiety per calorie weights protein and fiber, adds a small credit for water content, and divides by energy density. They agree on lean protein and disagree on high-fiber, high-water plant foods: cooked lentils score a PE ratio of 0.72, which is below Naiman's 1.0 line, and a satiety score of 31.2, which puts them in the top ten most filling foods per calorie.
What is a good satiety score?
On this scale, 20 and above is high — lean meat, fish, egg whites, nonfat dairy, and legumes. Between 8 and 20 is medium, which is where most vegetables, fruit, whole grains, whole eggs, and full-fat dairy sit. Under 8 is low: refined starches, nuts, oils, butter, and most of the snack aisle. A low score is not a ban, it is a statement about how much fullness that food buys for what it costs.
Why do vegetables not score at the top?
Because the formula floors the denominator at 100 calories per 100g. Without that clamp, a 20-calorie food would divide its way to an enormous score purely for being low in calories. With it, broccoli scores 15.3 and spinach 14.8 — genuinely good, but behind foods that carry real protein. Vegetables raise a plate's volume almost for free, which is a different job from anchoring it.
How do I find the water content of a food?
Nutrition labels do not print it, so either look the food up in the USDA FoodData Central database or estimate it: subtract the grams of protein, fat, and carbohydrate from the serving weight and most of what is left is water. As a rule of thumb, produce is 80–95% water, cooked lean meat and fish 65–80%, bread and cheese around 35–50%, and nuts, oils, and dry powders close to zero.
Does a high satiety score guarantee weight loss?
No. Fat loss depends on an overall calorie deficit held over time. What high-satiety foods change is how hard that deficit is to live with, because they deliver more fullness for the calories they spend. The score is a food-selection tool, not a mechanism on its own, and this page is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare professional.
Related Tools & Reading
PE Diet Calculator
Score a food on its protein-to-energy ratio — the original tool from The PE Diet.
PFFV Score Calculator
Protein, Fiber, Fluid, Volume — the same idea as a meal-level score out of 100.
Satiety Swap Tool
Pick a low-satiety food you're craving, get higher-satiety substitutes at the same calories.
All 63 Foods Ranked by Satiety
The full ranking behind the top ten above, with a line on why each food lands where it does.
Naiman's PE Ratio and Satiety Per Calorie
Where both numbers come from, what the book adds, and an honest read of the evidence.
Macro Calculator
Get daily protein, fat, and carb targets based on your TDEE and goals.