Week 3 Prep: Animal protein I: poultry and fish
A hands-on exercise computing fat, protein and calorie content across four items this week's lecture covers by anatomy, to see what that anatomy means in grams.
8 March 2027
Which cut of poultry or fish goes into a dish is as much a nutritional decision as an anatomical one — this week’s lecture explains why chicken breast, salmon, cod and duck behave differently at the knife; this exercise puts a number on what that anatomy means for composition.
Exercise#
Select each of this week’s four items in turn — chicken breast, salmon, cod, duck — at the same quantity, and record the fat, protein and calorie figures for each.
Macro calculator — Poultry and fish
Choose an ingredient and a quantity in grams. Fat, protein and calories are computed from USDA FoodData Central figures given per 100 g of the raw ingredient.
- Fat
- 2.6 g
- Protein
- 22.5 g
- Calories
- 120 kcal
Per 100 g figures: Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw — USDA, Agricultural Research Service, FoodData Central, FDC ID 171077.
Rank the four by fat content. The order should match the anatomy the lecture describes: a cold-water swimmer (salmon) stores fat through its flesh rather than under the skin the way a bird does, and a lean white fish that does little sustained swimming (cod) carries almost none. A ranking that surprises you is worth checking against the lecture’s account of muscle use and fat distribution before assuming the figure is wrong.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you can compute the fat, protein and calorie content of a stated quantity of at least one poultry or fish item using this week's calculator
- you can rank this week's four items by fat content and connect the order to the anatomy the lecture described
- you can name the FoodData Central source a chosen item's figures come from