Tofu vs. Tempeh vs. Seitan vs. Edamame: Protein, Price and Sodium Per Serving

Comparisons usually go wrong at the serving line, so that is where this one begins. Federal labeling rules assign every food category a reference amount, and in the FDA's table of reference amounts customarily consumed tofu and tempeh, cooked meat substitutes, and frozen vegetables all land on the same figure: 85 grams, or about three ounces. That shared number is a small gift. It means one column can serve all four foods without any of them being flattered by a bigger scoop.

Here is what that 85-gram serving holds, using the plain version of each food.

Three of these columns come from USDA's analytical food records. The seitan column is different, and it is worth knowing why: USDA has no standard record for seitan, so its figures are the median of six plain-style retail labels. More on that in a moment.

Even at a glance, the shape of the answer is visible. Seitan and tempeh sit close together at the top for protein. Tofu, the most familiar of the four, comes in last. And on sodium, three foods are nearly identical while one stands far apart.

If you have ever felt confused by conflicting figures for these foods, the confusion is not yours. It is baked into the source data, and two quirks explain most of it.

Tofu has two "firm" records, and they are not the same food

USDA carries a record for firm tofu at 9.04 grams of protein per 100 grams. It also carries a second one, described as raw firm tofu prepared with calcium sulfate, at 17.27 grams. Same word on the label, nearly double the protein. The difference is water. The first record is about 83% water and the second is about 70%, and protein rises as water is pressed out.

On the shelf, the lower number is the realistic one. Across 30 plain tofu products labeled "firm" in the federal branded database, the median was 8.86 grams of protein per 100 grams. Extra-firm blocks came in at a median of 10.59 grams. Only the dense, vacuum-packed blocks sold as "super firm" or "high protein" reached 15 to 16.5 grams.

That gives you a useful way to read the tofu case. The firmness word on the pack is really a protein signal, and the block that feels heaviest and driest in your hand is usually the one carrying the most.

Seitan's biggest number belongs to the flour

Seitan is made by cooking wheat gluten in a seasoned broth. The dry ingredient, vital wheat gluten, is listed by USDA at 75 grams of protein per 100 grams, and that figure often gets repeated as though it described the finished food. It does not. Prepared seitan lists water as its first ingredient, and the six plain-style retail products examined here declared between 17.9 and 31.6 grams per 100 grams.

There is no tidy federal average to fall back on, either. The one generic USDA entry that mentions seitan turns out to be built from a recipe that is mostly whole wheat flour, and it reads just 12.8 grams of protein. For seitan, the package label is the best evidence available, which is why this comparison uses a label median and says so.

If you enjoy this kind of label-level comparison, the same approach is applied to burgers in our look at plant-based patties versus beef.

Protein is only half of the question. The other half is what comes along with it, and here the four foods split cleanly.

Plain tofu, plain tempeh, and plain edamame are close to sodium-free as sold. Per gram of protein, they carry 1.3, 0.4, and 0.5 milligrams of sodium. Seitan carries 21.3 milligrams at the label median, with the six products ranging from 15.5 to 27. That is roughly 16 to 53 times the soy foods.

To turn that gap into a clear yes or no, this comparison borrows a line the government already drew. Under the FDA's rules for sodium claims, a food qualifies as "low sodium" at 140 milligrams or less per reference amount, and as "very low sodium" at 35 milligrams or less. Plain tofu, tempeh, and edamame all sit under the stricter of those two lines at an 85-gram serving. The lowest-sodium seitan in the set, at 298 milligrams per 100 grams, works out to about 253 milligrams per serving, which is over the low-sodium line before any sauce is added.

The reason is easy to spot once you read an ingredient list. One widely sold example, WestSoy's cubed seitan, lists filtered water, vital wheat gluten, and soy sauce as its first three ingredients, and declares 380 milligrams of sodium per 85-gram serving. Every seitan label in the set included soy sauce, sea salt, or both. The seasoning is part of how the food is made, so there is no plain version to reach for instead.

Here is the finding that may change how you shop the case more than the ranking itself. For tofu, tempeh, and edamame, the choice between plain and seasoned moves the sodium number far more than the choice between foods.

Tempeh shows it most sharply. Lightlife's Original tempeh declares 0 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams, while the same brand's Smoky Bacon tempeh declares 895 milligrams. That is more sodium than any plain seitan in this comparison, and it works out to 761 milligrams in an 85-gram serving, or about a third of the Daily Value.

The seasoned packs also give something up on protein. The smoky bacon and teriyaki versions declare 15.3 to 15.8 grams of protein per 100 grams against 21.4 grams for the Original, because marinade adds weight that is not tempeh. So the seasoned option lands on the less favorable side of both columns at once.

The same pattern repeats across the case:

• Tofu: Nasoya's plain extra-firm block declares 6 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams, and its teriyaki baked tofu declares 421. Across 69 seasoned, baked, or marinated tofu products, the median was 372 milligrams.
• Edamame: 90 plain frozen products had a median of 6 milligrams per 100 grams. The 25 salted or seasoned ones had a median of 270, and one "with sea salt" bag declared 324.
• Seitan: there is no plain baseline, and seitan jerky-style snacks in the database run past 1,100 milligrams.

None of this makes the seasoned versions a poor choice. They are convenient, they taste good straight from the pack, and baked tofu in particular is denser in protein than the plain block. It simply helps to know that the words "teriyaki," "smoky," or "sea salt" on the front tend to signal a few hundred extra milligrams on the back.

If sodium is the number you watch most closely, a similar plain-versus-flavored split shows up on the dip shelf in our comparison of guacamole, hummus, and tzatziki.

With the worksheet laid out, the answer comes in three parts.

Most protein per serving: seitan. At roughly 19.5 grams per 85 grams, and about 17.5 grams per 100 calories, seitan is the densest protein of the four on both measures. It is also the only one that does not clear the low-sodium line, and that is why it is named here and then set aside under the guardrail.

Best protein among those that clear the sodium line: tempeh. Plain tempeh delivers 17.2 grams of protein per serving, within about two grams of seitan, with 8 milligrams of sodium. It gets almost all of seitan's protein with almost none of the salt.

The other two each have a strength. Edamame brings 10.1 grams of protein per serving along with about 5 grams of fiber per 100 grams, which none of the others matches. Tofu trails on protein per serving at 7.7 grams, but it moves ahead of tempeh when measured per calorie, at 11.6 grams per 100 calories against 10.6. For anyone counting calories instead of servings, that reverses their order.

So the ranking depends a little on what you are optimizing. Per serving with a sodium guardrail, tempeh is the standout. Per calorie, tofu is a stronger option than its reputation suggests, especially in its super-firm form.

For a wider view of how these foods sit against meat, dairy, and pantry staples, our ranking of the best protein per dollar across 25 foods picks up where this one leaves off.

This piece was planned as a protein, price, and sodium comparison, and you may have noticed that price is missing. That is deliberate, and it is better to explain it than to quietly fill the gap with a guess.

The only free, national, per-food price data in the United States is the USDA Economic Research Service's Purchase to Plate price series, and its most recent figures are from 2017 and 2018. In that data, tofu has a directly observed price of about 60 cents per 100 grams. The other three do not hold up. Edamame's price is imputed from another food instead of being observed. Tempeh has no entry at all. And the single entry that mentions seitan prices the whole-wheat-flour composite described earlier, not the food on the shelf.

One clean price out of four is not a comparison. For tofu alone, the figure works out to roughly 6.6 cents per gram of protein in 2017-18 dollars, which is offered here as context only. A fair four-way price verdict would need dated shelf prices collected in stores, and until that exists, the honest position is that protein and sodium can be ranked and cost cannot.

Where solid price data does exist, it can change the picture considerably, as it did in our comparison of dried and canned beans.

A few notes on method, so the numbers can be checked.

The tofu, tempeh, and edamame rows use USDA's Standard Reference records, which are based on laboratory analysis. Brand-level figures, including every seitan number and all of the seasoned examples, come from the April 2026 release of USDA's branded food dataset, which holds the nutrition panels that manufacturers submit. Duplicate entries for the same barcode were collapsed to the most recent one, and all values were compared per 100 grams before being scaled to 85.

There are limits worth naming. Label records in that dataset were mostly published between 2021 and 2023, so a current pack may differ slightly. Manufacturers round label values, which adds a little noise to any single product. The seitan median rests on six products, which is a small set. And edamame figures refer to shelled beans; a bag sold in the pod weighs more than the part you eat.

This comparison also stays in its lane. It measures protein and sodium, and it does not weigh in on protein quality, digestibility, or how any of these foods fits a particular health condition. Those are questions for a registered dietitian or a physician who knows your circumstances.