Calories in Sprouts Salad

The recipe is a mixed salad in which sprouts are one ingredient among six: 48 g of lettuce, 40 g of sprouted moong, 30 g each of tomato, potato and curd, and 25 g of spring onion. It makes one side-salad bowl. That is very different from the bowl of mostly sprouts that many people eat as a breakfast or evening snack, which contains far more moong and correspondingly more protein and calories. If the bowl at home is nearly all sprouts, this figure will understate it; the two and three bowl figures, 154 kcal and 231 kcal, are a rough guide upward.

Carbohydrate supplies 58% of the energy, protein 24% and fat 18%. The sprouted moong and the potato give most of the carbohydrate, the moong and the curd most of the protein, and the curd nearly all of the small amount of fat. Lettuce, tomato and spring onion add water, crunch and very little energy. For 77 kcal the bowl brings a useful mix of vegetables, pulse and curd, which is a good return. What it does not deliver is a large amount of protein: 4.7 g is less than a bowl of any of the raitas in the same set.

A bowl of this salad is about 4% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 5% of a woman's. As a side salad it adds fibre and crunch to a meal of dal, roti and sabzi for very few calories. As a snack on its own it is light, and with 4.7 g of protein it will not hold hunger for long; three bowls give 14.1 g of protein for 231 kcal. Anyone relying on it as a protein dish should raise the sprouts and curd, or add paneer or boiled chana.

Raw sprouts are grown in warm, damp conditions that also suit bacteria, so wash them well and steam or blanch them, particularly for young children, older people, anyone who is unwell and during pregnancy, when a doctor's advice on raw foods should be followed. The bowl is salted as made here, and chaat masala or black salt adds more.