Frozen, prepared edamame has 11.9g of protein per 100g of shelled beans, which works out to 9.83g of protein for every 100 calories. That is USDA FoodData Central FDC 168411. It is more protein than any cooked bean, lentil or chickpea we hold, whether you count it by weight or by calories.
So if you picked edamame as the "high-protein snack", you picked right. What surprises people is the rest of the row: edamame is the fattiest and the least fibrous of the pulses it beats. Both halves are below, with the numbers.
How much protein is in edamame?
100g of shelled, frozen-then-cooked edamame gives 11.9g of protein and 121 calories. Put another way, 100 calories of edamame is about 83g of beans and carries 9.83g of protein.
Two limits, stated up front. The USDA row weighs the beans out of the pod, so a bowl weighed with its shells will read heavier than the protein it holds. And we hold no cup or pod weight for edamame, so we do not give a per-cup figure. If your bag lists a serving in grams, multiply the grams by 0.119 for the protein.
Does edamame have more protein than beans?
Yes. Per 100g, edamame's 11.9g beats cooked lentils at 9.02g, the best of the seven cooked pulses we hold, by 1.3 times. Per 100 calories the lead is 9.83g against 7.91g. Against cooked chickpeas, the lowest of the seven per calorie at 5.40g, edamame carries 1.82 times as much protein for the same calories.
The practical way to see it is the cost of a 30g protein serving, a common per-meal target:
| USDA row | Protein per 100g | Protein per 100 calories | Weight to reach 30g protein | Calories to reach 30g protein |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edamame — frozen, prepared, shelled | 11.9g | 9.83g | 252g | 305 |
| Lentils — cooked, boiled, with salt | 9.02g | 7.91g | 333g | 379 |
| Split peas — cooked, boiled, with salt | 8.34g | 7.19g | 360g | 417 |
| Kidney beans — red, cooked, boiled, with salt | 8.67g | 6.83g | 346g | 439 |
| Black beans — cooked, boiled, with salt | 8.86g | 6.71g | 339g | 447 |
| Pinto beans — cooked, boiled, with salt | 9.01g | 6.30g | 333g | 476 |
| Navy beans — cooked, boiled, with salt | 8.23g | 5.88g | 365g | 510 |
| Chickpeas — cooked, boiled, with salt | 8.86g | 5.40g | 339g | 555 |
30g of protein costs 305 calories of edamame, against 379 calories of cooked lentils and 555 of cooked chickpeas. It also takes the least food: 252g of shelled edamame, where every bean in the table needs 333g or more. For someone trying to hit a protein number without eating a mountain of beans, that gap is the whole point.
Where edamame ranks against everything else
On protein per 100 calories, edamame ranks 36th of the 182 foods we can rank, and 69th of 182 on protein per 100g. Meat, fish, egg whites and dairy fill most of the places above it. (We leave out seven meat rows whose USDA figures fail our own checks, so they are not ranked at all.)
Among plant foods, two kinds of food beat it per calorie. The first is other soy products. Firm tofu made with calcium sulfate gives 12.01g of protein per 100 calories, and 30g of protein costs 250 calories and 173g of it. Tempeh has 20.3g per 100g, so 30g takes only 148g, but 284 calories because it is denser. Soy sauce also scores higher per calorie, but it is a seasoning, not a protein source.
The second is very low-calorie vegetables: white mushrooms (14.05g per 100 calories), raw spinach, raw asparagus and raw arugula. They win only because they have so few calories. None has even 3.1g of protein per 100g, and 100 calories of raw asparagus is 500g of it. Edamame, tofu and tempeh are the plant foods that score high on both counts.
What you trade for the protein: fat and fiber
38.7% of edamame's calories come from fat (5.2g of fat per 100g), against 3.0% to 4.1% for lentils, split peas and the four beans, and 14.2% for chickpeas. That is the price of its protein lead. Edamame is a young soybean, and soybeans are an oil crop. Its fat is mostly unsaturated (0.62g of it is saturated), but it still counts toward the calories.
Fiber goes the other way. Edamame has 5.2g of fiber per 100g, the lowest of the eight foods in the table, where the beans run from 7.4g (kidney) to 10.5g (navy). Per 100 calories it is 4.30g, just behind chickpeas at 4.63g and well behind lentils at 6.93g. If fiber is what you came to pulses for, beans or lentils do that job better.
On minerals it holds its own. Its 436mg of potassium per 100g ties pinto beans for the most of the eight, and its 63mg of calcium is second only to navy beans at 69mg. For iron, lentils lead at 3.33mg per 100g, and edamame sits mid-table at 2.27mg.
One comparison we do not make is sodium. The seven cooked pulse rows were boiled with salt (237mg to 243mg per 100g), while the edamame row has 6mg. That gap is the cooking water, not the bean, so it says nothing about which food is saltier.
Is edamame a vegetable or a legume?
USDA files edamame under vegetables, not legumes, even though it is a soybean picked young. That filing is why edamame goes missing from many "best legume" lists, including our own legume protein ranking, which only covers USDA's legume category. Put it back with the beans and it tops the cooked ones, as the table shows.
Related
The full row is on the edamame nutrition page. For single matchups, see edamame vs lentils, edamame vs chickpeas and edamame vs tofu. And what 20g of protein costs runs the same kind of cost test across every food we hold.
Edamame is easy to eat and hard to log
A bowl of edamame in the pod is one of the worst foods to track by hand. You would have to weigh it, guess the shell share, then look up a shelled figure. With Sunn you send a WhatsApp message like "bowl of edamame, about 150g shelled" or a photo of the bowl, and the protein lands in your day's total. No app to open, no scale required.
Written by Espen Opdahl
Founder of Sunn. Building AI-powered nutrition coaching to make healthy eating simple. Nutrition data sourced from the USDA FoodData Central database.
Medical disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your diet or exercise routine.