Almonds Beat Walnuts Per Gram and Per Calorie

Raw whole almonds carry more of all seven nutrients they share with raw English walnut halves, and they do it per gram and per calorie alike — 21.5g of protein per 100g against 14.6g, and 3.71g per 100 calories against 2.23g. The rows are USDA FoodData Central FDC 2346393 (almonds) and FDC 2346394 (walnuts).

That a comparison survives both bases is the unusual part. Switching from weight to calories normally reshuffles this site's rankings, because the denominator does most of the work — it is why canned tuna leads seafood protein by weight and falls to 8th per calorie. Almonds and walnuts do not reshuffle. Seven columns, two bases, the same winner fourteen times.

What the sweep hides is that the seven margins are nothing alike, running from 3.25× on calcium down to 1.17× on zinc, and the smallest of them is not a real difference at all.

Seven wins, and the last one is rounding

Calcium is the one gap worth choosing a nut over: 43.87mg per 100 calories against 13.5mg, a 3.25-fold lead. Fiber follows at 2.34×, magnesium at 2.05× and potassium at 1.95×. Iron is 1.89× and protein 1.66×.

Then zinc, at 1.17× per 100 calories — and on the per-100g view the same column reads 2.86mg against 2.76mg. A 3.6% difference between two figures each reported to three significant digits is not a finding, it is the last digit moving. Counted honestly, this is a comparison almonds win six times and draw once. A table that prints all seven as wins is telling you something the numbers underneath it do not support.

Almonds are the lighter nut to begin with: 579 calories per 100g against 654 for walnuts. That is why the per-calorie leads are wider than the per-100g ones — 100 calories buys you 17.3g of almonds and only 15.3g of walnuts.

The same seven columns, weighed instead of counted

Per 100g almonds still lead all seven, but the zinc column all but closes: 2.86mg against 2.76mg. Every other gap stays clearly open, with calcium widest at 254mg against 88.3mg.

The omega-3 column we do not have

The real case for walnuts is omega-3 ALA, and our dataset holds no omega-3 column, so this post cannot settle the one claim walnut buyers care most about. We are not going to score it from memory. If ALA is why you buy walnuts, nothing in these two tables argues against you — the tables simply do not reach that far. Nor do they measure polyphenols, how long either nut keeps you full, or what roasting does to any of it.

On the columns we do hold, walnuts lead on exactly two, and both are fat: 10.66g per 100 calories against the almond's 8.83g, and 0.93g of saturated fat against 0.65g. Neither is a win in the sense anyone means it. More fat per calorie is arithmetic, not a benefit, and the almond is the one carrying less saturated fat.

Almonds are 3rd among nuts and 101st among foods

Almonds are 3rd of the 18 nut and seed rows we hold on protein per 100 calories, behind hemp seeds at 5.71g and pumpkin seeds at 5.35g. Walnuts are 13th. Across all 182 comparable foods on the site, almonds land 101st on protein per 100 calories — mid-table, not near the top. A nut is a fat with some protein attached, and per calorie that puts even the best of them well behind a lean meat or a legume.

Magnesium is the exception worth naming. Almonds are 44th of 179 foods on magnesium per 100 calories, and a 30g handful carries 77.4mg — 18.4% of the 420mg Daily Value. That is the one column where almonds are genuinely unusual rather than simply ahead of walnuts, whose same handful gives 42.6mg, or 10.1%.

What 30g of each is worth against a Daily Value

A 30g handful of almonds is 174 calories, 6.45g of protein and 3.24g of fiber; the same weight of walnuts is 196 calories, 4.38g of protein and 1.56g of fiber. On the minerals that handful is 76.2mg of calcium against 26.49mg, and 219.9mg of potassium against 127.2mg.

Read those as percentages of a day and the multiples calm down. The almond handful's calcium is 5.9% of the 1,300mg Daily Value against the walnut's 2.0%; its potassium is 4.7% against 2.7%; its iron is 6.2% against 3.7%. A 2.88-fold calcium lead is still 76.2mg, and neither nut is where you get your calcium. Zinc lands at 7.8% against 7.5% — the column where the two are, for practical purposes, the same food.

Where to look next

Both rows sit side by side, per 100g, on almonds vs walnuts, with the full rows on almonds and walnuts. For the other direction on the almond, almonds vs cashews is a much closer contest, and healthy snacks for weight loss puts both nuts next to the snacks people actually reach for.

The handful is the part that breaks tracking

Every number above is per 100g or per 100 calories, and the handful you take from the bag is neither. Nuts are the food most likely to be under-logged by half, because the portion is whatever your hand picked up while you were doing something else.

With Sunn you send "a handful of almonds" on WhatsApp and get a weight estimate and the calories back, without opening an app or picking a row from a list. The follow-up question about size comes only when a handful and a heap would land on different totals.