Your Muscle-Building Cheat Sheet

We picked the brains of sports nutritionist Matt Lovell to come up with your power-packed protein list. Here at Men’s Health, we go on about it all the time.

And for good reason: combined with a good exercise program, consuming it is the fastest way to build muscle, burn fat and get the body you want. But you need the best quality available, which comes at a price. That’s why we have put together this, your definitive guide to protein, showing you exactly how much you get for your hard-earned cash.

We’ve divided the foods into three categories: seafood, meat and poultry, and vegetarian. We’ve also stuck to foods that are as natural as possible. So although they have a protein content of 80-90 grams per 100g, we omitted supplements such as whey or soy isolate powders, and instead focused on nature’s handiwork. The vegetarian options have, by necessity, been exposed to a certain amount of processing, so we recommend choosing organic versions.

The foods featured are ranked in order of their protein content* – the more they have, the higher up the list they go. And in case you forgot: “If you’re training to get lean or build muscle, you should eat 1g of protein per half kilo of body weight each day,” says Lovell. “If you’re bulking up, increase that to 2g.”

Photo by iStock Jun 28, 2011