Indian Food Calorie Calculator

The Indian Plate Problem Nobody Names

Indian food is not unhealthy. It is unbalanced in a specific, fixable way: the carbohydrate and fat are excellent and the protein is an afterthought. Dal is treated as the protein dish, but a katori delivers about 8 g. Two katoris of dal still leaves most adults short of a single meal's protein target.

Run your own typical lunch through the calculator above and look at the macro bar, not the calorie number. Most people see something close to this:

• Protein 10 to 12 percent. Should be 20 to 30 percent if you are training or losing fat.
• Carbs 55 to 65 percent. Not a problem by itself, but it crowds out the protein.
• Fat 25 to 35 percent. Almost entirely cooking oil, and almost entirely untracked.

The fix is additive, not subtractive. You do not need to stop eating rotis. You need a protein anchor in every meal: curd, sprouts, paneer, soya chunks, eggs or chicken. That single habit moves the protein share from 11 percent to 25 percent without removing anything from the plate.

Reference Numbers Worth Knowing

• 1 roti: 120 kcal, 3.5 g protein
• 1 katori rice (150 g): 195 kcal, 4 g protein
• 1 katori toor dal: 140 kcal, 8 g protein
• 1 katori mixed sabzi: 125 kcal, 3.2 g protein
• 1 katori toned curd: 68 kcal, 5.4 g protein
• 100 g paneer: 265 kcal, 18 g protein
• 1 katori cooked soya chunks: 172 kcal, 26 g protein

Soya chunks are the outlier on that list and the reason they show up in almost every budget muscle plan we write. For deeper context on where Indian protein actually comes from, see Indian protein sources ranked and how much protein an Indian actually needs.

Use This With the Other Tools

This tool tells you what you ate. To find out what you should be eating, run the TDEE calculator for your calorie target and the protein calculator for your daily protein floor. If you are unsure how big your katori actually is, calibrate it with the katori portion calculator first, because every number on this page depends on that assumption.