Edamame is the rare izakaya order that is better than it looks. A whole bowl is 175 calories and 16g of protein, which is the protein of 2 eggs for the calories of one rice ball. The fat is the good kind, 8g from the soybean itself, and the fibre is 7g. It takes 10 minutes to eat because you are popping pods, so it slows down the drinking. Nothing else on the otsumami menu comes close. Karaage is 470 for a plate. Potato salad is 250. A single kushikatsu is 100.
The salt is the only thing to think about. A bowl carries 1 to 2g of it, which makes you drink more, which is the whole point from the izakaya's side. That is where edamame goes wrong: not the beans, but the third beer they pull along at 150 each. The garlic butter and chilli oil versions that trendy places sell add 60 to 90 calories of fat per bowl and taste like it. The plain boiled ones with sea salt are the deal.
The frozen bags from the supermarket are the same thing. Three hundred grams of frozen pods is about 210 calories and it is a 3 minute microwave. As a snack at home it beats every chip and every rice cracker on protein by a mile, and a bowl of it before dinner means you eat a smaller dinner. That is the trick with high protein, high fibre food: it does not make you thinner, it makes the next meal smaller.