Boxing nutrition, by the data

What should a boxer eat? We ranked 2,591 foods.

Every food a boxer might eat, scored on three things that decide a fight camp: how much protein you get per calorie, how much nutrition you get per calorie, and how full it leaves you. Pick a goal, and the ranking re-sorts.

Built by Jon Francis, H&G coach and boxing nutritionist, from the UK Government's CoFID food dataset. For a practical example of the trade-offs, see our boxing nutrition thought experiment on what happens if you could only eat 5 foods for life.

Plain English, no jargon. Switch to the advanced science view for the formulae and the method. Full method: scoring formulae, the dataset and how each measure is derived. Switch back to plain English any time.

New here Take the two-minute tour A scrolling walk through what 2,591 foods reveal about eating for boxing, before you dive into the explorer below. Start the story

The best all-rounders: loads of protein for the calories, packed with goodness, and they fill you up.Super Score = %Protein per kcal x Nutrient Density x estimated Satiety (each 0-100, product normalised).

SearchFood groupDiet

2,591 foods, ranked by All-Round Nutrition score

Chart

#	Food	Group	All-Round Nutrition	Protein	% Protein/kcal	Nutrients	Fullness	Carbs
1	Seaweed nori, dried, raw	Vegetables	100.0	90%	85	92	0g	333
2	Prawns standard, dried	Fish and fish products	89.0	88%	71	100	0g	370
3	Shrimps dried	Fish and fish products	81.4	91%	74	84	0g	293
4	Liver pig, raw	Meat and meat products	74.3	76%	91	76	0g	119
5	Eggs chicken, white, dried	Eggs	72.7	100%	53	96	0g	381
6	Liver chicken, raw	Meat and meat products	64.0	77%	77	76	0g	96
7	Liver calf, raw	Meat and meat products	61.4	70%	83	74	0g	111
8	Crab white meat, purchased cooked	Fish and fish products	57.4	97%	53	79	0g	86
9	Pork fillet medallions, grilled lean	Meat and meat products	56.9	96%	50	84	0g	157
10	Kidney lamb, raw	Meat and meat products	55.2	74%	69	76	0g	93
11	Kidney ox, stewed	Meat and meat products	55.0	71%	70	78	0g	140
12	Kidney ox, raw	Meat and meat products	54.6	79%	64	77	0g	89
13	Liver lamb, raw	Meat and meat products	52.5	59%	84	74	0g	143
14	Seaweed kombu, dried, raw	Vegetables	52.0	67%	64	86	0g	200
15	Pork fillet medallions, grilled, lean and fat	Meat and meat products	51.8	89%	49	83	0g	166
16	Seaweed wakame, dried, raw	Vegetables	50.9	70%	63	81	0g	264
17	Kidney pig, fried	Meat and meat products	50.3	58%	82	75	0g	209
18	Kidney pig, raw	Meat and meat products	49.8	72%	65	76	0g	88
19	Liver pig, stewed	Meat and meat products	49.6	54%	87	74	4g	190
20	Liver ox, raw	Meat and meat products	49.4	55%	86	74	0g	159
21	Liver lamb, fried in corn oil	Meat and meat products	48.4	51%	92	73	0g	244
22	Roe cod, hard, raw	Fish and fish products	47.9	83%	52	78	0g	107
23	Tuna flesh only, baked	Fish and fish products	47.8	95%	42	84	0g	135
24	Crab purchased cooked	Fish and fish products	46.5	68%	64	75	0g	120
25	Liver calf, fried in corn oil	Meat and meat products	46.4	51%	89	72	0g	183

Carbs and calories are per 100 g. Satiety is an estimate. It is modelled from the known drivers of fullness (protein, fibre, water, low energy density, low fat), not measured directly.

Not all food groups are equal

Average all-round score by food group. Fish and seafood win comfortably. Fats and oils score zero, because they carry no protein at all. Mean Super Score per Tier-1 food group across all 2,591 edible entries. The gradient reflects the multiplicative scoring: groups rich in lean protein and micronutrients dominate, while energy-dense, protein-free groups collapse toward zero.

Fish and fish products 19.2
Meat and meat products 13.0
Eggs 8.9
Vegetables 3.3
Nuts and seeds 2.6
Milk and milk products 2.4
Cereals and cereal products 1.2
Soups & sauces 0.7
Fruit 0.5
Sugars, preserves and snacks 0.3
Beverages 0.1
Fats and oils 0.0

How the scores work

Three building blocks, each out of 100:

Protein per calorie. How much of a food's energy comes from protein. Great for keeping muscle while the calories stay low.
Nutrients. How many vitamins and minerals you get per calorie, with points taken off for too much salt, saturated fat and sugar.
Fullness. How filling a food is likely to be. We work this out from protein, fibre and water (filling) versus how calorie-packed it is (not filling).

Then the goals just mix those together. Making Weight rewards protein and fullness. Bulking rewards protein but low fullness, so you can eat enough. Max Protein is the protein block on its own.

Each food is reduced to three normalised 0 to 100 measures, then combined multiplicatively:

% Protein per kcal = protein kcal / net kcal per gram, using Atwater factors (protein 4, fat 9, carbohydrate 3.75).
Nutrient Density = sum of capped %RDI across 25 encouraged nutrients, minus %RDI of sodium, saturated fat, sugar and alcohol, clipped at zero and normalised.
Estimated Satiety = weighted model of protein (0.35), fibre (0.30), water (0.20), energy density (0.10, inverse) and fat (0.05, inverse), normalised.

Super = Protein x Nutrients x Satiety. Goodness = Protein x Nutrients. Cutting = Protein x Satiety. Bulking = Protein / Satiety. Satiety is modelled, not measured, so treat it as a guide. Source data: the UK Government CoFID 2021 dataset.

The method follows mainstream nutrition science. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient, higher-fibre and wholegrain foods help you feel fuller for longer, and foods with a lower energy density let you eat more for the same calories. Ranking foods by nutrients per calorie is a well-established idea, and when you are cutting, a higher protein intake helps protect lean muscle.

For the complete method, including the goal formulae, the price data and the diet labels, see our methodology page.

Five things the data shows

Seaweed beats steak. Dried nori is the single most protein-efficient food in the set, ahead of every cut of meat.
Offal is gold. Liver and kidney crowd the top ten, a reminder that the least fashionable foods are often the most nutritious.
White fish rules fight week. Eggs, Prawns, Seaweed lead the Making Weight ranking.
Fats and oils score zero. No protein means no score, however much energy they carry.
Dried wins on paper. Drying concentrates protein, so dried foods top the per-calorie measure. Useful to know, and a reason to read prep notes carefully.

Find foods like the ones you eat

Every food sits on this map by what it is made of, so foods close together eat alike. Bored of one thing? Click it and find its nearest cousins to swap in. A 2D t-SNE projection of standardised nutritional features (macro share of energy, nutrient density, estimated satiety, energy density). Click a point to rank its neighbours by Euclidean distance in the original feature space.

New to the map? Take the two-minute guided story tour first.

Each dot is a food, and foods that sit close together have a similar overall make-up. There are no axes here: left, right, up and down have no fixed scale, and how big a clump looks - or how far apart two clumps sit - does not mean much. What counts is which foods are neighbours.

Find a food

Colour by

Click any food on the map - or search above - to find its closest nutritional cousins, and see why they are alike.

Two foods, head to head

Pick any two foods and see how they stack up: protein, nutrition, how filling they are, how lean and how light. Compares two foods across five normalised 0 to 100 axes: %protein per kcal, nutrient density, estimated satiety, leanness (100 minus fat share of energy) and inverse energy density.

Food A

Food B

Axes are each scored 0 to 100. Lean = share of energy not from fat. Light = lower energy density (fewer calories per gram).

Go deeper

Value Cheapest protein & fuel Every food ranked by what its protein and energy actually cost, from official UK shop prices. See the value ranking Diets Eat like the greats What Tyson, Ali and Canelo really ate, with every staple mapped to its ranking. See the diets Directory A to Z of foods Browse every food with its own page, from chicken and rice to cod and lentils. Browse all foods Plant High-protein vegetarian The most protein-rich vegetarian foods, with vegan and dairy-free filters in the explorer. See vegetarian foods Method How we score it The data, the formulae and the honest limitations behind every ranking. Read the methodology

Explore by goal

Explore by food group

Common questions

What should a boxer eat to make weight?

Foods that give the most protein and the most fullness for the fewest calories. In this dataset that means lean white fish such as cod, haddock and tuna, dried egg white, and lean cuts like pork fillet. They top the Making Weight ranking because they combine a high share of calories from protein with a high estimated satiety score.

Which food has the most protein per calorie?

Dried nori seaweed has the highest share of its calories coming from protein, ahead of dried prawns, dried shrimp and raw liver. Drying concentrates protein and removes water, which is why dried foods rank so highly on this single measure.

Is steak really not the best protein for boxers?

Steak is a strong protein source, but on a per-calorie basis it carries more fat than lean fish, white poultry or organ meats, so it ranks below them here. The rankings reward protein density and nutrients per calorie, not protein in absolute grams.

How is the satiety score worked out?

Satiety is an estimate, not a measured value. It is modelled from the known drivers of fullness, weighting protein, fibre and water content positively and energy density and fat negatively. It is a guide to how filling a food is likely to be, not a clinical measurement.

Where does the food data come from?

Every food comes from the McCance and Widdowson Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID) 2021, the open dataset published by the UK Government. The scoring model that ranks them was built by Jon Francis, H&G coach and boxing nutritionist.

This is general information for boxers, not medical or dietary advice. For a plan built around you, speak to a registered dietitian or your GP. Making weight is about eating smarter, not crash dehydration, which harms both health and performance. Food data from the UK Government CoFID 2021 dataset, used under the Open Government Licence.

Want the principles behind the numbers? Work through our free 10-week boxing nutrition course, or read how training shifts the maths in how many calories boxing burns. Ready to train? Book a free trial session or see our recreational adults classes.