Indian food composition, per 100 g

IFCT 2017 is India's reference database of what foods contain. Scientists at the ICMR National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR-NIN), Hyderabad, collected samples of each food from regions across the country, analysed them in the laboratory and reported average values for energy, protein, fat, carbohydrate, fibre, minerals, vitamins and fatty acids. It replaced the older Nutritive Value of Indian Foods tables that dietitians had relied on for decades.

This section covers 257 of the most useful foods, arranged in 13 groups: cereals and millets (14), pulses and legumes (14), green leafy vegetables (26), vegetables and mushrooms (39), roots and tubers (10), fruits (44), nuts and oilseeds (14), spices, herbs and condiments (21), cooking oils and fats (14), milk and dairy (3), meat, poultry and eggs (14), fish and seafood (41), and sugars and natural drinks (3).

Every figure is per 100 g of the edible part of the raw food: the weight after peeling, coring or removing bones, before cooking. That makes foods easy to compare, but it is not a serving. Dry grains and dals swell when cooked, greens shrink, and oil or ghee added in the kitchen is not included. To apply a value to a real portion, weigh the raw food and scale the figure, or simply use the tables to see which foods are richer in a nutrient.

Requirements on these pages come from the ICMR-NIN 2020 Recommended Dietary Allowances, for a 65 kg man and a 55 kg woman doing sedentary work. Where a page says 100 g of a food meets a share of the day's need, it is measured against those figures. People with a medical condition, and pregnant or breastfeeding women, should get personal targets from a dietitian.