Calories in Aloo Palak

The recipe behind the figure puts 150 g of spinach, 80 g of potato, 50 g of tomato and 25 g of onion into one bowl, cooked in 2 teaspoons of oil. Spinach collapses as it cooks, so that weight of leaves is less daunting than it sounds, but it is still a generous bowl of sabzi and more than a small katori on a thali may hold. The figure applies to that recipe and that serving. Aloo palak from a restaurant is typically pureed and finished with cream or butter, and none of that is counted here.

The energy is split almost evenly between fat at 46% and carbohydrate at 43%, with protein at 12%. The fat is the 2 teaspoons of oil. The carbohydrate is mostly the potato, with a little from the tomato and onion. The spinach, although it is the largest ingredient by weight, contributes very little energy; what it brings is much of the 6.8 g of fibre, along with iron and calcium. Compared with aloo methi at 276 kcal, this recipe is lighter mainly because it uses less oil.

A bowl of aloo palak is about 9% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 12% of a woman's. Two bowls come to 384 kcal with 11 g of protein and 18.8 g of fat. With 5.5 g of protein, aloo palak does a little better than most potato sabzis, but it is still a vegetable dish and needs dal, curd or paneer next to it. The potato already supplies some of the meal's starch, which leaves room to go easier on the roti or rice.

Spinach has a name for iron and calcium, but it holds on to both: the body absorbs only part of the iron and calcium in leafy greens. Aloo palak is a useful dish, not a replacement for anything prescribed for low iron. Anyone advised by a doctor or dietitian to limit certain greens, for example because of kidney stones, should follow that advice.