Indian food calorie counter

A medium plain roti (about 40 g) has roughly 110 kcal, a katori of cooked white rice (about 150 g) about 195 kcal, and a katori of home-style toor dal about 150 kcal. The counter above has 225 everyday Indian foods with calories, protein, carbs and fat for the portion you actually eat, so you can add up a whole day in a minute instead of guessing.

How the numbers were worked out

Every value is per portion, for a typical home or eatery preparation. They come from three kinds of source:

• Single foods such as rice, milk, egg, banana, nuts and paneer use the Indian Food Composition Tables 2017 from ICMR-NIN and USDA FoodData Central. For example, USDA lists cooked white rice at about 130 kcal per 100 g, so a 150 g katori comes to about 195 kcal. A large egg is about 72 kcal with 6.3 g of protein.
• Cooked dishes (dal, sabzi, curries, biryani, dosa) are built from their ingredients the way most kitchens make them, including a normal amount of oil, then checked against USDA's survey values for Indian dishes such as dal, dosa, samosa and biryani.
• Calories from macros follow the standard Atwater factors that IFCT also uses: 4 kcal per gram of protein, 4 per gram of carbohydrate and 9 per gram of fat. That's why a single teaspoon of oil or ghee (5 g) adds about 45 kcal.

So treat every number as a good estimate, not a lab result. Two plates of "the same" dish can differ by 30% or more.

A worked example

Say your lunch is 2 plain rotis, a katori of toor dal, a katori of rice and a katori of mixed veg sabzi:

Now add a teaspoon of ghee on the rotis and an extra tadka on the dal and you're near 800 kcal, without the plate looking any different. That gap is the main reason people "eat less" and don't lose weight.

What changes the numbers most

Oil and ghee. Most of the difference between a light home sabzi and a restaurant one is fat. Restaurant gravies like paneer butter masala, dal makhani and butter chicken often carry two or three times the oil and cream of a home version. If you cook with a heavy hand, add a teaspoon of ghee or oil per katori as a separate item (it's listed under Paneer & dairy).

Portion size. A "katori" in this counter is a standard 150 ml bowl filled to a normal level. Many home katoris are bigger, and a heaped serving of rice can easily be 250 g. Weigh your usual katori of rice and your usual roti once with a kitchen scale. It takes two minutes and makes every count after that more accurate.

Frying and sugar. Deep-fried snacks absorb oil, which is why a samosa (about 250 kcal) has more calories than two rotis. Sweets in syrup and drinks with sugar add up quickly too: a glass of sweet lassi is about 230 kcal, and each teaspoon of sugar in chai is another 20.

How to use your total

On its own, your day's total doesn't mean much. Compare it with your target:

1. Find your daily target with the calorie calculator, which works out your maintenance calories and a sensible deficit or surplus. Type it into the target box.
2. Log a normal day honestly, including chai, biscuits and the extra roti at dinner.
3. Look at the meal bars. Most people find one meal, often dinner or evening snacks, is doing most of the damage.
4. Check protein. Many Indian vegetarian days land at 40–50 g, which is low for anyone training. The protein calculator gives you a daily number and the macro split here shows where you stand.

If you want the full background on deficits, read our guide to maintenance calories and calorie deficits, and for a printable reference see the Indian food calorie chart.

Indian portions and the ICMR-NIN plate

The ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians (2024) suggest a day built mostly from cereals and millets, pulses, vegetables, fruit, milk or curd and a small amount of nuts, with fats and oils kept to about 27 g a day for a 2,000 kcal diet. That's roughly five or six teaspoons in total, across every meal. Using the counter for a few days is an easy way to see how far a typical restaurant meal or a fried snack pushes past that.

Millet rotis (bajra, jowar, ragi) are listed separately. They have about the same calories as wheat rotis per piece, so swap them for fibre and variety, not because they're "lighter".

Limitations

• It's approximate. Recipes, brands and cooks differ. Packaged foods have a nutrition label on the back, and that label is more accurate than any general table, so use it with "Add your own food".
• Raw versus cooked. Values here are for cooked, as-served food. 100 g of raw rice is not the same as 100 g of cooked rice.
• It doesn't track micronutrients, fibre or sodium.
• It's not for medical diets. If you have diabetes, kidney disease, are pregnant, are under 18 or have a history of disordered eating, plan your intake with a doctor or registered dietitian rather than a calorie target.

Nothing you add is stored. The day lives in the page's link, so "Share this result" sends someone the same list of foods, and closing the tab clears it. To check whether your weight is in a healthy range for your height in the first place, the BMI calculator uses the Asian-Indian cut-offs.

This counter is for general information and isn't medical advice.