Country Archer Original Beef Jerky: Nutrition & Labelgrade C+ (67/100)

The short answer

Country Archer Original Beef Jerky packs 7g of protein into 70 calories per 1 oz (28g) serving — and it does it on just 1g of fat, which makes it one of the leaner jerkies on the shelf. The ingredient list is genuinely clean: beef, a soy-sauce-and-brown-sugar glaze, garlic, liquid smoke, Worcestershire, and pepper, with no nitrites or MSG. It earns a C+ (67/100). Protein density is the strength; sodium is the catch, and it’s the only thing dragging the grade down out of B territory.

Why the C+

The two F’s tell different stories. Fiber is automatic — meat doesn’t have it, and the formula doesn’t penalize that beyond the floor. Sodium is the honest knock: 280mg in a single ounce is a lot, and because salt is how jerky is cured and kept shelf-stable, there’s no version of this product that scores well there. That one dimension is the entire gap between a C+ and a B.

The clean-label claim, checked against the actual list

Country Archer’s whole pitch is “real ingredients,” and unlike a lot of jerky marketing, the USDA ingredient list actually backs it up. There’s no sodium nitrite, no MSG, no artificial preservatives — the recipe is beef cured with a soy-sauce, brown-sugar, garlic, liquid-smoke, and Worcestershire glaze. Compared with gas-station jerky that leans on nitrites and flavor enhancers, that’s a meaningful difference, and it’s why ingredient quality grades a solid B.

Two caveats worth being honest about. First, the soy sauce contains wheat, so this is not gluten-free — and it contains soy. Second, “clean” doesn’t mean “no sugar”: the glaze is sweetened with both brown sugar and organic evaporated cane syrup, which is why even the Original flavor lands at 4g of sugar per ounce. That’s modest, but it’s the reason this isn’t a free pass on a strict keto or no-sugar plan.

Surprisingly lean for jerky

The number that actually stands out here is fat: 1g total, 1g saturated, per serving. Most meat sticks and a lot of jerky run 5-7g of fat because they’re made from fattier ground meat. Country Archer uses lean whole-muscle beef and air-dries it, so almost the entire 70-calorie load is protein. If you’re counting macros, that’s about as clean a protein-to-calorie ratio as a meat snack gets — roughly 10 calories per gram of protein, with very little fat riding along. The trade-off is texture: leaner jerky tends to be chewier and drier than the fatty kind.

How jerky works as a protein source

Jerky is a genuinely good way to get protein on the go — shelf-stable, no refrigeration, 7g in a piece you can eat one-handed in a car or on a trail. Per 100g, its 25g of protein rivals plain cooked chicken breast. Where it falls down versus fresh meat or a protein shake is sodium: an ounce of this jerky carries roughly ten times the salt of an equivalent amount of plain cooked chicken. So the honest framing is: excellent portable protein, not an everyday protein base. Treat it as the snack you reach for when fresh food isn’t an option — the gym bag, the hike, the road trip — rather than the thing you build three meals a day around. And because the sodium scales with every bite, a single ounce is a smarter serving than half the bag.

Ingredients

Beef, soy sauce (water, wheat, soybeans and salt), brown sugar, lemon juice, garlic powder, liquid smoke (water, natural hickory smoke concentrate), organic Worcestershire sauce (organic vinegar, organic wheat-free tamari soy sauce, organic evaporated cane syrup, salt, and organic spices), fine pepper. Contains wheat and soy. (Verbatim from the USDA Branded Foods entry, FDC 2016974.)

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Scope: This page applies specifically to Country Archer, Beef Jerky, Original, Original · UPC 853016002472. Other sizes, flavors, or formulations may differ.