How much chicken breast a day is too much?

Not enough: Less than 200g a day

Contrary to popular advice, it is worth counting your chickens. If you're an average 12st (76kg) man, you need at least 200g of it each day. Without it, you risk looking like a Sunday league player the morning after his stag night: slow and off the mark. 200g of chicken provides your recommended daily allowance (RDA) of protein: 0.8g per kilo of body weight. "If you're even slightly deficient in protein you can't build muscle tissue," says sports nutritionist Matt Lovell (fourweekfatloss.com).

Aside from protein, chicken contains high levels of selenium (39% of your RDA per 100g), an important mineral if you want a hatchling of your own. University of Edinburgh research found that selenium boosts your fertility.

This bird also comes ready stuffed to protect your heart: a chunky chicken sandwich provides 30% of your RDA of the vitamin B6, which makes you twice as likely to dodge heart disease as people who don't get enough. Clucking hell.

Enough: 450-550g a day

Getting your hands on breasts is rarely an invitation to turn down. Leaner than thighs or drumsticks, a single 100g breast portion provides 30g of protein for the price of just 1g of saturated fat. By comparison, a trimmed sirloin steak gifts your arteries 15g of heart-bashing sat fats for exactly the same amount of protein.

Chicken wins, clearly. But for best results, skin your meat before you eat it. If you leave it on you're looking at finger-lickin' bad news. The extra sat fats in the skin increase your levels of cholesterol, found to cause 27% of coronary heart problems in a study in Circulation. To bulk up, Lovell recommends 2.2g of protein per kilo of body weight a day – that's around 500g of chicken for a 12st (76kg) man.

It's important to mix up your sources of protein. So follow a tuna salad at lunch with a chicken stir-fry for dinner. And sprinkle some pine nuts for an extra 14g of protein per portion. And just to confirm, a ‘bargain bucket' never counts.

Too much: More than 550g a day

Mainline on chicken and you're in danger of crowding out other nutritional benefits. "It's vital not to neglect other sources of protein such as fish, eggs and lean red meat, which offer useful amounts of iron, good for the immune system, and B12, important for energy metabolism," says NHS dietitian Tracy Purbrick. Grill a tuna steak for dinner instead and, as well as a lean helping of protein, you will find making spreadsheets and re-tuning Freeview boxes unexpectedly easy.

Research at the University of Manchester revealed that vitamin D, which is found aplenty in tuna, sharpens your mental processes. Just don't embark on your own never-ending chicken run. That will only see your money flushed down the toilet, Lovell says. "There is a limit on how much protein your body can use," he says. "Eat too much and it's going to be excreted as waste product." So keep to the right amounts to stay high in the pecking order.

Photograph by Max Oppenheim (maxoppenheim.com), food stylist Lorna Brash

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Chicken breast supplies lean protein and a number of essential vitamins and minerals to your diet. Even with healthy foods, though, it’s easy to overeat and get too much of a good thing. Stay within the recommended serving size of chicken breast for the best health benefits.

Healthy Amount of Chicken Breast

Whether you choose lean, skinless chicken breast or another animal protein, a healthy serving is just 3 ounces. That’s considerably less than what many restaurants serve or what you may portion out onto your plate at dinner.

Visualization can help you determine the correct amount. The USDA’s MyPlate portion tool recommends imagining a normal-sized plate divided into fourths and filling one quarter with a protein like chicken breast. Another helpful cue is to picture foods as the same size as common household items. For example, a 3-ounce serving of chicken breast is the same size as a deck of cards.

The USDA advises adults, depending on age and gender, to get 5 to 6.5 “ounce equivalents” of protein foods a day, which may include chicken breast. So a 3-ounce chicken breast supplies about half of your protein needs for the day.

Macronutrients in Chicken Breast

Chicken breast is an excellent, complete source of protein. Protein foods from animals classify as “complete” because they provide all the essential amino acids your body needs to build and repair tissues. In one small chicken breast, you get 27 grams of protein, or 55 percent of the daily value (DV) if you follow a 2,000-calorie diet. The serving gives you 133 calories and 3 grams of fat, of which only 1 gram is the unhealthy saturated variety.

Vitamin and Mineral Content

A serving of chicken breast adds a good blend of minerals and vitamins to your daily regimen. Of particular note among the minerals it offers are phosphorus and selenium – you’ll get 20 and 39 percent of the DV for each, respectively. You need phosphorus to build healthy bones and teeth, while selenium is an antioxidant mineral that helps protect you against free radicals – molecules that can damage your healthy cells.

Chicken breast is a rich source of the B-family vitamins, which work in tandem to help you process food into fuel to run your body. You’ll get 12 percent of the daily value for riboflavin (B-2) in chicken breast, plus a whopping 40 percent of the DV for niacin (B-3) and pyridoxine (B-6). The serving also supplies 18 percent of your needs for choline, a sometimes-overlooked vitamin that contributes to brain and nerve functions, like memory and muscle control.

Chicken Breast in a Healthy Diet

If you fry your chicken breast or smother it in barbecue sauce, you forfeit some of the health benefits by raising the fat or sugar content of an otherwise-healthy food. Baking, broiling, grilling and poaching are the healthiest preparation methods. Add fresh herbs like garlic, rosemary, thyme or marjoram and a dash of lemon juice to boost the flavor. Or “blacken” your chicken breast with spicier seasonings like cayenne, paprika and cumin.

No matter how you prepare it, 3 ounces of sliced chicken breast can turn a leafy green salad into a meal. Chop chicken breast with scallions and red bell pepper and mix with a dollop of plain yogurt for a healthy take on the chicken salad sandwich. Make “fried” chicken in the oven with just a trace of olive oil for a mock version of this favorite comfort food.

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