High Protein Chips: How Much Protein Is in 28 g of Each Kind

A 28 g (1 oz) handful of plain pork skins has 17.4 g of protein. The same handful of potato chips has 1.8 g. High protein chips close that gap. They are made from meat or cheese instead of potato or corn. The tables below show how far each kind gets you.

How much protein do regular chips have?

Potato and corn chips sit a fraction of a gram apart. The USDA record for plain salted potato chips lists 6.39 g of protein per 100 g. The record for plain white corn tortilla chips lists 7.1 g. Both use a portion of 1 oz (28.35 g), which works out to 1.8 g and 2.0 g. A whole 8 oz (227 g) bag of the potato chips holds 14.5 g of protein and 1,208 kcal.

Chip (USDA record)	Portion	Protein	Energy	Protein per 100 kcal
Potato chips, plain, salted	28.35 g (1 oz)	1.8 g	151 kcal	1.2 g
Tortilla chips, plain, white corn, salted	28.35 g (1 oz)	2.0 g	134 kcal	1.5 g
Potato chips, plain, salted	227 g (8 oz bag)	14.5 g	1,208 kcal	1.2 g

It’s the last column that matters. Potato and corn chips are mostly starch and fat, so protein stays between 1 and 1.5 g for every 100 kcal. An ounce of pork skins gives 17.4 g. Getting that from potato chips takes 272 g, or 1,447 kcal.

A kitchen scale settles what your handful weighs, and the per 100 g figure for your chip does the rest.

What counts as high protein chips?

Chips whose main ingredient is meat or cheese. I ranked the snacks USDA has records for by protein per 100 kcal, since that shows what you get for the energy. Cheese is counted by its weight before baking, because baking drives water off and the finished crisp weighs less than the cheese it came from.

Snack (USDA record)	Portion	Protein	Energy	Protein per 100 kcal	Sodium
Pork skins, plain	28.35 g (1 oz)	17.4 g	154 kcal	11.3 g	515 mg
Parmesan, hard, baked into crisps	28.35 g (1 oz) before baking	10.1 g	111 kcal	9.1 g	333 mg
Cheddar, baked into crisps	28.35 g (1 oz) before baking	6.6 g	116 kcal	5.7 g	185 mg
Tortilla chips, plain	28.35 g (1 oz)	2.0 g	134 kcal	1.5 g	93 mg
Potato chips, plain, salted	28.35 g (1 oz)	1.8 g	151 kcal	1.2 g	149 mg

Pork skins win on protein, though they’re the saltiest too. A 28 g (1 oz) serving has 515 mg of sodium, about 3.5 times the 149 mg in potato chips. Hard Parmesan has 333 mg an ounce against 185 mg for cheddar. Cheese is salty too. They aren’t light, either. The record lists 31.3 g of fat per 100 g, so that ounce holds 8.9 g of fat next to its 17.4 g of protein. The record also lists a half-ounce portion (14.2 g), which holds 8.7 g of protein and 77 kcal.

If you watch your salt, read the sodium column first. Nuts are the other crunch worth weighing, and high protein nuts gives the grams in a 28 g handful of each.

How do I make high protein chips at home?

Bake cheese until it sets. Crisp follows. For Parmesan crisps, shred hard Parmesan, drop small mounds on a lined baking sheet, bake until golden and let them cool on the sheet. They firm up as they lose heat. I haven’t timed a batch, so every figure above is arithmetic from the records.

Weigh the cheese before it goes in the oven. A cup of shredded cheddar is 105 g by its USDA portion, which is 3.7 oz. Scooping instead of weighing can turn an ounce of cheddar crisps into almost four, and a 116 kcal snack into one of about 430.

Make a batch from 100 g of Parmesan (35.8 g of protein), count the crisps and divide. That’s the protein in one crisp, the only number worth logging.

Does a protein dip fix a regular chip?

Partly. Put 60 g of plain nonfat Greek yogurt next to 28.35 g of tortilla chips and the plate holds 8.2 g of protein and 170 kcal. That’s 4.8 g per 100 kcal, up from 1.5 g for the chips alone, and the yogurt supplies 6.2 g of it for 37 kcal. A real gain.

Pork skins still win at 11.3 g per 100 kcal. This plate keeps the chip you like, and a pinch of onion powder in the yogurt makes it a dip. Greek yogurt also goes into the batter for high protein French toast.

How do I check a bag that says high protein?

Divide the protein in grams per serving by the kcal per serving, then multiply by 100. Under 2 g per 100 kcal is a regular chip, like the potato chips at 1.2 g. No brand is named, because I only used USDA records.

How much of a day’s protein is one serving?

For a 70 kg adult, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans put the daily goal at 1.2–1.6 g of protein per kg, which is 84–112 g. One 28 g serving of pork skins covers 16–21% of that range, Parmesan crisps 9–12% and potato chips 2%.

Chips are a snack for healthy adults. With kidney disease, during pregnancy or breastfeeding, or under 18, a doctor should set the protein figure.

The protein calculator starts from 1.2 g per kg of a reference weight and never goes below 60 g. The range itself is unpacked in how much protein you should eat a day.

A bag is easy to log wrong, because the serving is one ounce and the bag holds eight, so I scan the barcode in Calsa and photograph the label when there is no match.