Jerky earns its reputation: it’s dense protein you can carry anywhere with almost no carbs. The label has one weak spot, sodium, and one variable that’s entirely in your hands when you make it yourself: sugar. Here are the real numbers, meat by meat.
Two quick ground rules before the tables. First, jerky is concentrated: drying removes most of the water, so an ounce of jerky started life as roughly two to three ounces of raw meat, which is why the protein and sodium per ounce look high. Second, the figures below for beef and venison come from USDA FoodData Central composites; turkey jerky has no single USDA reference entry, so its row is a range across commercial labels. Treat all of it as typical, not a lab result for your exact bag.
What’s in an ounce, by meat
Per 1 oz (28 g), the standard serving. Beef and venison are USDA composites; turkey is the range across commercial products.
| Meat | Calories | Protein | Fat | Carbs | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beef jerky | ~115 | 9.3 g | 7.2 g | 3.1 g | ~500 mg |
| Turkey jerky | 60–90 | 6–13 g | 0–1 g | 3–10 g | 270–490 mg |
| Venison jerky | ~111 | 9.0 g | 6.3 g | 4.1 g | ~829 mg |
Sources: USDA FoodData Central (beef FDC 2705860 / 167536; venison FDC 2705915) and USDA Branded turkey-jerky entries. Commercial products vary widely; always read the label on a specific bag.
Great protein. Watch the sodium.
The micronutrients that come along
Because it’s concentrated red meat, beef jerky carries a useful load of minerals and B vitamins per ounce, not just protein. Approximate values for beef jerky, with the share of an adult Daily Value:
| Nutrient | Amount | %DV | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zinc | 2.3 mg | ~21% | Immune function and taste; beef is one of the better dietary sources. |
| Vitamin B12 | 0.3 µg | ~12% | Nerve and blood-cell health; found almost only in animal foods. |
| Phosphorus | 114 mg | ~9% | Bone and energy metabolism. |
| Iron | 1.5 mg | ~8% | Heme iron from red meat, absorbed more readily than plant iron. |
Values from the USDA beef-jerky composite; %DV against FDA adult Daily Values. Turkey and venison differ, game meat, for instance, tends to be iron-rich.
The two dials you control at home
Sodium and sugar are where homemade pulls ahead. Salt at about 1.75% of the meat weight seasons and helps preserve without going overboard, and you can skip the sweet glaze entirely for a savoury batch with near-zero added sugar. Commercial jerky often leans the other way on both, more salt for shelf life, more sugar for flavour, which is why a store strip can carry noticeably more of each than a home batch with the same protein.
Control the salt yourself
The marinade calculator sets the salt by weight, so a batch is seasoned right without guessing, or dialled down on purpose.
Open the Marinade CalculatorJerky for keto, high-protein and the trail
The macro shape is why jerky shows up in so many bags and gym lockers. On protein, 9-plus grams at around 60–115 calories means roughly a third to a half of the calories come from protein, one of the best ratios of any shelf-stable snack. On keto, plain and peppered styles sit near 3–6 g of carbs an ounce and fit most budgets; sweetened teriyaki and honey styles are the exception, sometimes 8–10 g, so the carb line is the one to check. For hiking, it’s close to ideal: no refrigeration, low water weight, dense protein per gram carried, and the sodium that’s a watch-item at rest becomes useful electrolyte replacement when you’re sweating.
The downsides, honestly
Two things keep jerky from being a free lunch. The first is sodium. The Dietary Guidelines put the daily ceiling at under 2,300 mg, and the average American already runs well over it at around 3,400 mg, so a couple of ounces of jerky is a meaningful chunk of the day’s budget, worth tracking if you eat it often or watch your blood pressure. The second is curing agents. Much commercial (and some home) jerky uses sodium nitrite, which does real safety work against botulism but is also why cured meats draw scrutiny; if you’d rather avoid it, uncured styles and home batches without pink salt are the route. Neither is a reason to avoid jerky, just to eat it as the concentrated snack it is.