Calories in Rava Ladoo

This rava ladoo is the coconut kind. The recipe roasts 50 g of rava in 20 g of ghee, adds 30 g of coconut and 35 g of castor sugar, and shapes 4 ladoos, so one ladoo contains 12 g of rava, 7.5 g of coconut, 9 g of sugar and 5 g of ghee. Five grams is about one teaspoon of ghee. The ladoo is small, a couple of bites. Shop versions and those made for festivals in Maharashtra and the south are often larger and studded with fried cashews and raisins. It is the 6th lightest of the 20 sweets in the set, one step above besan ladoo at 168 kcal.

Fat supplies 52% of the energy, carbohydrate 43% and protein 5%. That is a higher share of fat than most people expect from a semolina sweet, and the reason is that two fats are present: the ghee and the coconut. Coconut fat is largely saturated, as ghee is, and between them they give the ladoo 9.8 g of fat. Coconut and rava also give 2.4 g of fibre. Protein is low at 2.1 g, lower than any sweet in the set apart from peanut chikki.

Measured against a day, one rava ladoo is about 8% of the energy requirement of a sedentary man and 10% of a woman's. Two come to 338 kcal and three to 507 kcal, with 29.4 g of fat in the three. With only 2.1 g of protein it does not make a snack that lasts, so it works better as the sweet after a meal than as something to stave off hunger in the late afternoon. If it is the evening snack, a glass of milk or a handful of roasted chana beside it fills the gap that the ladoo leaves. Half a ladoo is about 84 kcal.

A rava ladoo of this size has 9.8 g of fat, 52% of its energy, and 9.9 g of sugars. The sugars are moderate for a ladoo; the fat is on the high side and largely saturated, since it comes from coconut and ghee together. Rava is refined wheat, so the ladoo is not suitable for anyone avoiding gluten. People following advice from a doctor or dietitian on saturated fat or blood sugar should count shop ladoos by their real size.