Chicken breast, raw, skinless, boneless

About this food

Skinless, boneless chicken breast is about as close to a pure-protein food as whole meat gets: roughly three-quarters of its calories come from protein, with very little fat and no carbohydrate at all. That macro shape is why it shows up so often in meal plans built around a specific daily protein target — it lets someone add protein without moving the calorie total much.

The values above describe the raw, uncooked cut. Cooking changes both weight and nutrient concentration — a breast loses roughly a quarter of its raw weight as moisture during grilling or baking, which concentrates the protein and calories per gram of the cooked result. If you're weighing a cooked portion against these numbers, that's the adjustment to keep in mind; weighing raw before cooking is the more precise way to use this page's figures directly.

Because it carries so little fat itself, the flavour and any additional calories in a chicken breast dish usually come from how it's cooked — oil, sauce, breading — rather than the meat. That makes it a flexible base for hitting a protein number while leaving carbohydrate and fat largely to be decided by the rest of the meal.

For a full daily target across calories and all three macros, try the protein calculator.