Lean beef

The percentage on a ground beef package is a claim about the raw grind, not the cooked patty. 90/10 ground raw runs 185 calories, 18.2 g of protein, and 12.8 g of fat per 100 g. 80/20 ground raw runs 243 calories, 17.5 g of protein, and 19.4 g of fat in the same weight. Fat goes up by more than half between the two, protein goes down, and both numbers describe the meat before it touches a pan. Neither record on this page reports a cooked ground beef state. If you weigh the patty after cooking and log it against the raw 90/10 or 80/20 record, you are applying a raw-weight ratio to a weight that already lost water and rendered fat in the pan. Weigh raw, before the pan, if you want either record to mean what it says.

Cut beats grind for controlling fat, and the spread is large. Per 100 g raw, top round runs 5.7 g of fat, top sirloin steak runs 5.7 g, and tenderloin steak runs 6.5 g, all close to a third of what 80/20 ground carries and roughly half of 90/10. Eye of round trimmed to zero fat runs lower still at 2.5 g. Ground beef on this page does not go leaner than 90/10, so anything below 12.8 g of fat per 100 g means picking a whole-muscle cut trimmed close, not looking for a lower percentage that is not on the page.

Every record shares a 114 g reference portion, and three of them also carry a real single-item weight. The eye of round roast's own portion is 690 g raw for the whole roast. The tenderloin roast's cooked portion is 462 g for the whole roast. The T-bone steak's cooked portion is 360 g for the whole steak. None of those match the shared 114 g reference amount, and none of them match each other. If a recipe says "one roast" or "one steak," use the record's own whole-item weight rather than assuming a uniform serving across cuts.

Fiber and sugar are not reported on any of the eight records here. That is expected for a single-ingredient meat and not a data gap worth chasing. Carbohydrate sits at zero on five of the eight and at 0.2 to 0.9 g on the other three, which is trace and not worth budgeting against. Spend the tracking effort on protein and fat, where the records actually disagree with each other.

Cooking concentrates the remaining weight, and this page has one clean pair to show it. Tenderloin appears twice: raw as a steak at 143 calories and 21.1 g of protein per 100 g, and cooked as a roast, separable lean only, trimmed to zero fat, at 176 calories and 27.7 g of protein per 100 g. The jump comes from water loss concentrating what is left, the same cut before and after the pan. The T-bone steak, cooked and grilled, runs higher still at 219 calories and 27.3 g of protein per 100 g, carrying more fat than the tenderloin roast because it is trimmed less closely and grilled rather than roasted. Match the record to the state on your plate rather than assuming raw and cooked numbers are interchangeable at the same gram weight.

The macro table cannot show the reason beef sits on this site at all. Every record above reports calories, protein, carbs, fat, and sodium, while some source records also retain iron, zinc, and B12 fields that this page does not surface. Beef is a dense source of heme iron, the form the body absorbs more efficiently than the non-heme iron in plants, and of zinc and B12 at levels most plant sources do not reach. This page keeps its comparison to the fields it displays. For the mechanism and the absorption numbers, use iron absorption, zinc, and protein quality rather than a figure invented here.

Where the swap makes more sense than the default. Chicken breast costs less per gram of protein than most cuts on this page and carries a fraction of the fat without the trim-level guesswork, which is the reason it outranks lean beef as a default rather than a rotation. Beef earns its place when the meal wants the iron and zinc density chicken does not carry, or when a recipe like recovery pasta is built around ground beef specifically.

The decision rule for this page turns on trim state more than species. Read the package for the cut name and the fat trim before you tap a record. A generic "beef" entry is not wrong so much as unfinished, sitting somewhere between eye of round and 80/20 ground until you tell it which one you bought.