Calories in Coconut Barfi

This is a khoya-based nariyal barfi, not the simpler kind made from coconut and sugar alone. The recipe combines 50 g of coconut, 100 g of khoya, 50 g of castor sugar and 2 tablespoons of ghee and cuts the set slab into 4 pieces, so each piece has 12 g of coconut, 25 g of khoya and 12 g of sugar. That is a large, rich square, and a shop may cut its pieces larger still. It stands 10th of the 20 sweets from lightest to heaviest and is the heaviest single piece in the set: every sweet above it is a bowl or a whole kulfi.

Fat supplies 66% of the energy, carbohydrate 27% and protein 7%. Three fats stack up in one piece, 19.7 g in all: coconut, khoya and ghee. Each of the three is high in saturated fat. The sugar is moderate by the standards of Indian sweets, and the coconut contributes the 2 g of fibre. So the calorie load of this barfi is a matter of fat much more than of sweetness, which is the opposite of what most people assume about mithai.

One piece is about 13% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 16% of a woman's, which is the scale of a bowl of kheer and not of a small sweet. Two pieces come to 530 kcal with 39.4 g of fat. It makes sense to count a piece as the dessert for the day and not as a bite alongside others. Having it after a meal that was light on fried food and ghee keeps the day's fat in proportion. The 5 g of protein comes mostly from the khoya.

Fat is the number to know: 19.7 g in a single piece, 66% of its energy, and coconut, khoya and ghee are all rich in saturated fat. Sugars come to 17.9 g, which includes the milk sugar in khoya along with the 12 g added. A person who has been told to watch saturated fat for a heart condition or cholesterol should ask their doctor or dietitian about coconut-based sweets specifically, and should remember that a larger shop piece raises every figure.