Chomps Original Beef Sticks: 9g Protein, Labelgrade C+ (67/100)

The short answer

A Chomps Original Beef Stick gives you 9 g of protein for 90 calories in a single 32 g stick (USDA FDC 2652237) — roughly 28 g of protein per 100 g, dense enough to rival plain cooked meat. The panel is short and unusually clean for a cured snack: 100% grass-fed-and-finished beef, sea salt, a little encapsulated lactic acid, cultured celery powder for curing, and four spices. There is no added sugar and no synthetic nitrate or nitrite. It earns a C+ (67/100) — and the only thing standing between it and a higher grade is salt, which every shelf-stable meat stick needs to survive a backpack.

Why the C+

Read that table honestly and the story is consistent: every “good” score reflects a real choice Chomps made (grass-fed beef, no sweeteners, no synthetic cure), and every “bad” score is baked into the category, not a Chomps misstep. The fiber F is just physics — meat has none. The sodium F is the price of shelf-stability. The grade is a C+ because a clean meat stick is still a cured-meat product, and the formula doesn’t pretend salt away.

The cure is the whole trick

The single most interesting line on this label is cultured celery powder, and it’s worth understanding because it’s what lets Chomps sit on a shelf without sodium nitrite. Celery is naturally high in nitrate; ferment it with the right bacteria and you get a concentrated, food-derived source of the exact curing compound that pink curing salt provides synthetically. The beef ends up genuinely cured — pink, preserved, shelf-stable — which is why the “no nitrates or nitrites added” claim on the wrapper is technically true but slightly counterintuitive: the meat is cured, just by way of vegetables instead of a chemical additive. If you avoid cured meat for the nitrite itself, Chomps doesn’t change that math. If you avoid it for the synthetic preservative, this is built for you.

Where the salt comes from — and why it can’t leave

Chomps does almost everything a clean-label shopper wants, then runs into the one wall no shelf-stable meat snack can climb: 290 mg of sodium per stick, an F on the sodium dimension. This isn’t a seasoning decision that could be dialed back. Salt is doing preservation work alongside the celery nitrate, drawing moisture out so the stick survives a hot car and a week in a bag. Strip it and Chomps would have to refrigerate the product (and lose the entire grab-and-go premise) or reach for synthetic preservatives (and lose the clean label that’s its whole identity). So the salt stays. The practical takeaway: one stick is a sensible 290 mg, but four across a day is close to 1,000 mg before anything else you eat — fine for most people, worth watching if you’re sodium-sensitive.

How it stacks up against the aisle

Two other sticks on this site make the trade-offs concrete (numbers from each product’s own USDA-sourced page):

Three honest reads. Field Trip is the closest competitor and actually edges Chomps on sodium (240 mg), but it’s a beef-and-pork blend, it isn’t grass-fed, and it’s the only one of the three carrying added sugar (2 g of its 3 g). Jack Link’s wins where mainstream jerky always wins — more protein per stick (12 g) and a lower price — but it pays for it with nearly double the sodium and a panel that includes MSG, maltodextrin, and actual sodium nitrite. Chomps is the clean-sourcing pick: zero sugar, grass-fed, no synthetic cure, at the cost of a couple grams of protein versus Jack Link’s and a small sodium premium versus Field Trip. If a meat stick is a daily habit and ingredients are why you’re here, Chomps is the rotation pick; if you just want the most protein per dollar, Jack Link’s does that.

A note on the whole-food comparison

One stick’s 9 g of protein is about what you’d get from 1 oz of cooked chicken breast (~29 g) or roughly 1.5 large eggs — at similar calories. The difference that matters is sodium: that ounce of plain chicken carries around 25 mg versus Chomps’ 290 mg. Chomps isn’t trying to beat chicken on nutrition; it’s trying to beat no protein at all when you’re on a plane, a trailhead, or between meetings with no fridge. On that scorecard — shelf-stable, pocket-sized, zero prep, clean label — it’s hard to do better.

Ingredients

Grass-fed-and-finished beef, water, sea salt, encapsulated lactic acid, cultured celery powder (celery powder, sea salt), black pepper, red pepper, garlic powder, and coriander — nine ingredients, stuffed in a beef collagen casing. (Verbatim from the USDA Branded Foods entry, FDC 2652237.)

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Scope: This page applies specifically to Chomps Original Beef Sticks (13.8 oz (384 g) — 12-stick box) · UPC 856584004763. Other sizes, flavors, or formulations may differ.