Chicken breast

Two cooked states exist here, cooked by different methods, and they land close together. Braised skinless breast reports 166 calories and 32.1 g of protein per 100 g. Roasted skinless reports 165 calories and 31 g. That is roughly 55 to 57% more calories and 38 to 43% more protein per 100 g than the raw skinless record shows, regardless of which method did the cooking. Two independent cooked records agreeing this closely is the actual evidence for the yield argument. It is not one preparation's fluke.

Weigh raw when you can, weigh cooked when you can't, and log the record that matches which one you did. A raw skinless breast at the USDA reference amount of 114 g logs against the raw record for 25.7 g of protein. Cook that same breast and it will weigh less on the scale, and it now belongs against a cooked record instead, not the raw one scaled down. If you're working from a cooked batch with no raw weight to reference, the braised record's own portion size, one piece at 174 g, and the roasted record's portions, 140 g per cup chopped or 86 g for half a breast with bone and skin removed, are real weights to check a kitchen scale against. A batch recipe like the high-protein soup sidesteps the raw-to-cooked conversion entirely by weighing the raw chicken breast into the pot and weighing the finished pot to portion it, so its per-serving protein figure never touches this page's cooked records at all.

Skin changes the fat math more than the cooking method does. Raw skinless carries 1.9 g of fat per 100 g against 4.8 g for raw skin-on, roughly 2.5 times more. Roasted skinless carries 3.6 g against 7.8 g for roasted skin-on, roughly 2.2 times more. That difference holds whether the chicken is raw or cooked, so a rotisserie breast eaten with the skin on belongs against the meat-and-skin record, not the skinless one a tracker defaults to.

Sodium sits in a tight band across all five records, which tells you these are unseasoned. Raw skinless reports 66 mg per 100 g, raw skin-on 48 mg, braised skinless 47 mg, roasted skinless 74 mg, roasted skin-on 71 mg. None of that is added salt, brine, or marinade. A deli, rotisserie, or pre-marinated product will run well outside that band, and none of the five records here will represent it accurately. Log those from the package label when one exists.

Fiber and sugar go unavailable on three records and read as an explicit 0 g on the other two, and that split is a data artifact, not a discovery about chicken. The raw skinless, raw skin-on, and braised records carry no fiber or sugar figure at all, so the table marks them unavailable. The two roasted records report 0 g fiber and 0 g sugar directly. Chicken has neither either way. Read the blank as "not measured for this record," not as "contains none," and don't let the roasted record's explicit zero look more trustworthy than the raw record's blank.

Cutting and recomposition is where the skinless records earn the page. Roasted skinless buys 31 g of protein for 165 calories. Roasted skin-on buys 29.8 g of protein for 197 calories, 32 more calories for 1.2 g less protein, because the extra calories come almost entirely from fat rather than more protein. On a fixed calorie budget, that 32-calorie gap is the cost of the skin, and it buys you nothing more to eat.

Meal prep is why this page exists in the first place. Cooked chicken breast holds up under refrigeration well enough to anchor a week of containers, and the thing that goes first is texture, not safety. Batch-cook against the braised or roasted record, weigh the whole batch once, and divide by container count instead of estimating "one breast" per box, because a braised piece at 174 g and a roasted half-breast at 86 g are not the same serving.

Bulking and high-volume training is where the skinless records stop being the answer. A reader who needs more calories per bite without doubling the amount of food on the plate has the skin-on records already on this page: roasted meat-and-skin buys 32 more calories than roasted skinless at the same 100 g for a protein loss of only 1.2 g. That is the direction to move within this family before reaching for a different food entirely, and it costs almost nothing in protein to do it.

The decision rule for the whole page is short. Match the state on the scale, raw or cooked, to the record you log, match skin-on or skinless to what's actually on the plate, and treat any pre-seasoned or restaurant chicken as its own food rather than one of these five.