Calories in Mooli Paratha

The source is a standard recipe: 80 g of atta, 100 g of radish, 25 g of onion and 2 tablespoons of oil, divided into 3 parathas. Each paratha gets roughly 27 g of flour and 33 g of grated radish. That is less dough than many households use for a stuffed paratha, and far less than the large ones sold at roadside stalls on winter mornings. If yours fills the tawa, it may well hold the flour of two of these, and the calories follow the flour.

Radish is mostly water, so it adds bulk and sharpness without adding much energy. The split shows it: 47% of the calories come from fat, 45% from carbohydrate and 7% from protein. Nearly all the fat is the cooking oil and nearly all the carbohydrate is the atta, while the whole wheat flour and the radish together give 4.3 g of fibre. In this set of recipes the mooli paratha sits at 184 kcal, between the gobi paratha at 181 kcal and the aloo paratha at 191 kcal, which says how little the choice of vegetable changes the total.

For a sedentary adult, one mooli paratha is about 9% of a man's daily energy requirement and 11% of a woman's. Two make 368 kcal with 6.6 g of protein, and three reach 552 kcal with 9.9 g. The protein stays low however many are eaten, so the usual bowl of curd is doing real work at the table. With curd and no butter, two parathas make a reasonable winter breakfast; with butter and a glass of sweet lassi, the same breakfast is a much larger one.

Mooli fillings are salted to draw out water, so a home paratha can hold a fair amount of salt that the calorie figure says nothing about. The larger point is portion creep: a mooli paratha feels light because of the vegetable, yet close to half its energy is oil. Anyone managing diabetes, blood pressure or a heart condition should go by the portions and fat allowance set by their doctor or dietitian.