Written by Ethan M. Stone
Jerky should be one of the easiest health foods to get right. Take lean beef, dry it, and you end up with a snack that is mostly protein and almost no fat. That is the entire concept. The trouble starts in the marinade.
Flip over a few bags next time you are in the snack aisle. Most jerky runs somewhere between 500 and 600 milligrams of sodium per ounce, which is roughly a quarter of what an adult should eat in a day, packed into a portion the size of a deck of cards. Sugar turns up second or third on plenty of ingredient lists. And several of the big national brands lean on hydrolyzed corn protein, maltodextrin and yeast extract to build savory flavor into beef that was not especially good to start with.
So which bags are worth buying? We pulled the nutrition panels on five brands most stores carry and compared them on what matters: sodium, added sugar, what is actually in the marinade, protein per serving, and whether the company will tell you where its beef came from. Every number below is per one ounce (28 grams) of each brand's Original flavor.
1. T.O.P. Chops
60 calories | 350mg sodium | 6g sugar | 8g protein | 1g fat
Top Chops wins this list on salt, and with jerky, salt is the whole ballgame.
At 350 milligrams per ounce it is the lowest here by a wide margin. That is 15 percent of your daily sodium, against 26 percent for the saltiest bag on the list. Spread across a three serving bag, it is the difference between a snack you can eat without doing math and one that takes a real bite out of the day's budget. It is also the leanest option in the group at 60 calories and a single gram of fat, with no saturated fat at all.
Then there is the label. Beef, seasoning (brown sugar, salt, dehydrated garlic, black pepper, plum powder), gluten free tamari, rice wine vinegar, lemon juice concentrate, hardwood smoked sugar. That is the whole list. No hydrolyzed corn protein, no maltodextrin, no yeast extract, and nothing hiding behind the word “flavors.” You could buy every one of those ingredients at a grocery store. The jerky carries no nitrites, no MSG and no gluten, and the beef is 100 percent USDA Select or better, raised in the United States.
The company, which started in Canton, GA decided to commission a food science group to reformulate the recipes. The results were improved products with less sodium and sugar and better flavor. In addition, the plum powder adds a touch of sweetness and brings antioxidants into the jerky.
The plum powder deserves a second look. Dusty Jaquins and his partner Sellers started the company in Safety Harbor, Florida, and brought in food scientists specifically to pull salt and sugar out of a standard jerky marinade without wrecking the flavor. Plum powder turned out to be the answer. It sweetens, it brings antioxidants with it, and it let them get the sodium down to a number nobody else here can match.
Two things it does not win. At 6 grams, the sugar is not the lowest on this list. At 8 grams, neither is the protein. If one of those is your only concern, skip down to number three. But for a snack that is low in salt, low in calories, low in fat and built from ingredients you can pronounce, this is the best bag on the shelf. Runs about $6.99.
2. Archer
70 calories | 420mg sodium | 4g sugar | 9g protein | 0.5g fat
Archer, formerly Country Archer, is the only brand here made entirely from grass fed beef, and that is not a small thing. Grass fed cattle produce meat with a better omega 3 to omega 6 ratio and more conjugated linoleic acid than grain finished animals. If how the cow was raised matters to you, this is your bag.
The panel backs up the marketing. Four grams of sugar is the lowest of any sweetened jerky on this list, a third less than Top Chops, Oberto or Jack Link's. Nine grams of protein, half a gram of fat. The ingredients run grass fed beef, gluten free tamari, brown sugar, garlic powder, pineapple juice, liquid smoke, organic Worcestershire and black pepper, with several of the sub ingredients certified organic. It is certified gluten free and Paleo, with no preservatives.
Sodium is what holds it at number two. At 420 milligrams it is 20 percent saltier than Top Chops, with a few more calories on top. That is a close call, and if you weight sourcing above salt you could reasonably flip these two. Nobody would argue with you.
3. Tillamook Country Smoker
70 calories | 500mg sodium | 0g sugar | 14g protein | 1.5g fat
This one is a specialist. Zero sugar and 14 grams of protein per ounce, both the best numbers on the list by a comfortable stretch. If you are doing keto or counting macros, stop reading and go buy it.
It sits at number three because of salt. Five hundred milligrams an ounce works out to 22 percent of your daily value, which is what tends to happen when you take the sugar out and let salt do more of the preserving and the flavoring. One note for people who read labels closely: Tillamook uses cultured celery powder, a natural nitrate source. It is not synthetic sodium nitrite, but it does a similar job in the meat, and plenty of shoppers care about that distinction.
4. Oberto
roughly 70 to 80 calories | 600mg sodium | 6g sugar | 12g protein
Oberto has been making jerky in Seattle since 1918 and the label still reads like it. Beef, sugar, water, beef stock, salt, spices and natural flavorings, natural smoke flavor, vinegar. Gluten free, no added MSG, no synthetic nitrites. Twelve grams of protein per ounce is very good.
The salt is the problem. Roughly 600 milligrams an ounce, 26 percent of your daily value, the highest figure in this comparison, and it arrives alongside 6 grams of sugar. This is a solid traditional jerky and a real step up from the bottom of the category. On a list ranked by health, though, that sodium number is hard to get past.
5. Jack Link's
80 calories | 520mg sodium | 6g sugar (all added) | 10g protein | 1.5g fat
Jack Link's sells more jerky than anyone and has the longest ingredient list here by a distance. Beef, water, sugar, brown sugar, sea salt, salt, soy sauce, hydrolyzed corn protein, yeast extract, flavors, maltodextrin, cultured celery extract, beef stock, pineapple powder, citric acid. Four of those (hydrolyzed corn protein, yeast extract, maltodextrin and unspecified “flavors”) are there to manufacture savory depth, not to feed you. Two of them commonly carry free glutamates, which is worth knowing when you read the no added MSG claim on the front of the bag.
The numbers match the label. Highest calories in the group at 80, 520 milligrams of sodium, and 6 grams of sugar with every gram of it added. Protein is fine at 10 grams. The soy sauce contains wheat, so this is also the only bag here that is not gluten free. It is cheap, it is everywhere, and it will get protein into you. It just finishes last on health.
The Bottom Line
Line up all five panels and the same thing keeps showing up. The healthiest jerky is the one that fixed its salt and sugar problem back in the kitchen instead of covering it up on the front of the bag.
Top Chops finishes first because it went after the category's real weakness. Its 350 milligrams of sodium per ounce sits more than 25 percent under the group average, and it pairs that with the lowest calorie and fat counts and a label you can read in one breath. Archer takes second on grass fed sourcing and the least added sugar of any sweetened option. Tillamook is the pick for anyone tracking macros. Oberto is a good old fashioned jerky with a salt problem, and Jack Link's is what it has always been, which is cheap, everywhere and heavily engineered.
The rule for shoppers is simpler than any ranking. Flip the bag over before it goes in the cart. If sugar shows up in the first three ingredients, or you spot hydrolyzed protein or maltodextrin anywhere on the list, put it back. The bags at the top of this list do not need much beyond beef, salt, smoke and a marinade somebody actually thought about.
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