Great Value Chicken Nuggets: Nutrition & Labelgrade C+ (68/100)

The short answer

Great Value Chicken Nuggets give you 9 g of protein for 150 calories in a 4-nugget (75 g) serving — and a 32 oz (907 g) bag holds roughly 108 g of protein across about 12 servings (USDA FDC 2676531). They earn a C+ (68 / 100). This is Walmart’s house-brand, lowest-shelf-price nugget, and the grade tells the honest story: real chicken leads the ingredient list, but soy protein concentrate is brought in to stretch it, so the protein density lands below both Tyson and Applegate, and the breading layers on carbs, sodium, and frying oil.

Why the C+

Two of these scores are unusual for a meat product and worth a second look. The fiber “D” is actually a high mark for the category — plain chicken and most nuggets have zero, and the only reason this one isn’t an F is that corn flour in the breading carries a couple of grams. The sodium “D” is the real penalty: 430 mg is the highest per-serving sodium of any nugget on this site.

The breading is doing more than you think

Look at where the 150 calories actually go. Protein contributes just 36 of them (9 g × 4). The other ~114 come from 8 g of fat — largely the vegetable oil the breading is “set in” — and 13 g of carbohydrate, essentially all from the wheat-flour-and-corn-flour coating. So more than half of a Great Value nugget’s energy is breading and frying oil, not chicken. That is the mechanism behind the C+ protein density: it isn’t that the chicken is bad, it’s that there’s a thick, calorie-dense shell around a relatively small amount of soy-extended meat.

The soy tell, and the budget trade-off

Great Value’s third ingredient is soy protein concentrate. It’s a legal, common chicken extender, but it’s a tell — Tyson’s list has no soy, and that single difference is most of why Tyson reaches 15.6 g of protein per 100 g while this product sits at 12.0 g. You are, in effect, paying for a little less chicken per nugget.

Whether that matters depends on what you’re optimizing. As a protein source, this is the weakest of the three: to actually hit a 30 g protein target you’d be eating well over a dozen nuggets and most of a day’s sodium. As a cheap, kid-friendly freezer staple — air-fry, plate, done — it’s a reasonable buy, and Great Value is typically the lowest unit price in the aisle. The honest framing is value-versus-quality: you trade ingredient cleanliness and protein density for the lowest sticker price.

How it compares

Two clean reads here. Tyson is the protein pick: a denser 15.6 g per 100 g and no soy, so per gram of food you get meaningfully more chicken (its higher per-serving numbers also reflect a larger 90 g serving). Applegate is the ingredient pick: it skips the soy concentrate and phosphates, runs the lowest sodium of the three at 340 mg, and is the only one to clear a B-. Great Value’s case is neither — it’s price. And against the whole-food benchmark, none of these nuggets are close: plain chicken breast carries roughly two and a half times the protein density of a Great Value nugget at a fraction of the sodium.

Ingredients

Chicken breast with rib meat, water, soy protein concentrate, then under 2%: tricalcium phosphate, salt, sodium phosphate, and flavor. Battered and breaded with wheat flour, water, salt, and under 2%: wheat starch, buttermilk blend (buttermilk, whey), spice, potassium chloride, yellow corn flour, dextrose, paprika and turmeric extractives, natural flavor, and leavening — all set in vegetable oil. The phosphates bind and firm the meat (and drive the 300 mg of added calcium); the soy concentrate stretches the chicken; the rest is the breading. (Verbatim source: USDA Branded Foods, FDC 2676531.)

🔬 Compare this product side-by-side with any other →

See how this fits your day — protein calculator · macro calculator

Scope: This page applies specifically to Great Value Chicken Nuggets (32 oz (907 g)) · UPC 078742122953. Other sizes, flavors, or formulations may differ.