Protein in Indian food
Almost every protein figure published for Indian food describes the dry ingredient, not the cooked dish. Dry toor dal carries 21.7g of protein per 100g. A katori of dal is made from about 25g of it, so what reaches your plate is closer to 5.4g.
Dry toor dal, per 100g
21.7g
On the plate, per katori
5.4g
Every composition figure below is from the Indian Food Composition Tables 2017, published by the National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR), Hyderabad — 528 foods sampled across 6 regions of India. Requirements are from ICMR-NIN 2020.
Protein per 100g, as measured
Raw and uncooked unless the row says otherwise. The ± is the standard deviation across the six regional samples — how much a food actually varies across the country, which most tables drop.
Dals and pulses
| Food | Protein | Energy | Protein relative to the densest food listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soya bean (white)IFCT: Soya bean, white · B025 | 37.8g1 of 6 regions | 377kcal | |
| Masoor dal (lentil, split)IFCT: Lentil dal · B013 | 24.35g± 1.1 | 322kcal | |
| Moong dal (green gram, split)IFCT: Green gram, dal · B010 | 23.88g± 0.61 | 326kcal | |
| Urad dal (black gram, split)IFCT: Black gram, dal · B003 | 23.06g± 0.59 | 324kcal | |
| Toor / arhar dal (red gram, split)IFCT: Red gram, dal · B021 | 21.7g± 0.5 | 331kcal | |
| Chana dal (Bengal gram, split)IFCT: Bengal gram, dal · B001 | 21.55g± 1.45 | 329kcal | |
| Dried peasIFCT: Peas, dry · B017 | 20.43g± 0.79 | 303kcal | |
| Rajma (red kidney bean)IFCT: Rajmah, red · B020 | 19.91g3 of 6 regions | 299kcal |
Dairy
| Food | Protein | Energy | Protein relative to the densest food listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paneer | 18.86g± 0.75 | 258kcal | |
| Khoa | 16.34g± 0.61 | 316kcal | |
| Buffalo milk (whole)IFCT: Milk, whole, Buffalo · L001 | 3.68g± 0.13 | 107kcal | |
| Cow milk (whole)IFCT: Milk, whole, Cow · L002 | 3.26g± 0.06 | 73kcal |
Egg, meat and fish
| Food | Protein | Energy | Protein relative to the densest food listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mutton, leg (goat)IFCT: Goat, legs · O003 | 22.07g± 0.63 | 160kcal | |
| Chicken breast (skinless)IFCT: Chicken, poultry, breast, skinless · N003 | 21.81g5 of 6 regions | 168kcal | |
| Rohu (fish)IFCT: Rohu · S006 | 19.71g± 0.57 | 102kcal | |
| Chicken leg (skinless)IFCT: Chicken, poultry, leg, skinless · N001 | 19.44g4 of 6 regions | 384kcal | |
| Egg, whole (boiled)IFCT: Egg, poultry, whole, boiled · M004 | 13.43g± 0.28 | 148kcal | |
| Egg, whole (raw)IFCT: Egg, poultry, whole, raw · M001 | 13.28g± 0.29 | 135kcal |
Nuts and seeds
| Food | Protein | Energy | Protein relative to the densest food listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Groundnut (peanut)IFCT: Ground nut · H012 | 23.65g± 0.85 | 520kcal | |
| Sunflower seedIFCT: Sunflower seeds · H020 | 23.53g5 of 6 regions | 586kcal | |
| Til (white sesame seed)IFCT: Gingelly seeds, white · H011 | 21.7g5 of 6 regions | 520kcal | |
| Cashew nut | 18.78g± 0.58 | 583kcal | |
| Almond | 18.41g± 0.04 | 609kcal |
Cereals and millets
| Food | Protein | Energy | Protein relative to the densest food listed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quinoa | 13.11g1 of 6 regions | 328kcal | |
| Suji (semolina)IFCT: Wheat, semolina · A022 | 11.38g± 0.37 | 334kcal | |
| Bajra (pearl millet)IFCT: Bajra · A003 | 10.96g± 0.26 | 348kcal | |
| Atta (whole wheat flour)IFCT: Wheat flour, atta · A019 | 10.57g± 0.37 | 320kcal | |
| Jowar (sorghum)IFCT: Jowar · A005 | 9.97g± 0.43 | 334kcal | |
| Rice (raw, milled)IFCT: Rice, raw, milled · A015 | 7.94g± 0.58 | 356kcal | |
| Ragi (finger millet)IFCT: Ragi · A010 | 7.16g5 of 6 regions | 321kcal |
Turning that table into a plate
Cooking does not add or remove protein. It adds water. So the figure that matters is not how much dal you served — it is how much dry dal went into the pot.
protein on your plate = dry weight you cooked × (protein per 100g ÷ 100)
| Portion | Made from | Protein |
|---|---|---|
| One katori of dal | 25g of dry toor dal | 5.4g |
| Two rotis | 60g of atta | 6.3g |
| One katori of rice | 45g of raw rice | 3.6g |
| 100g of paneer | weighed as you buy it | 18.9g |
| Two eggs | about 100g, shelled | 13.3g |
| 100g of chicken breast | skinless, raw weight | 21.8g |
The weights in the middle column are ordinary household quantities, not measurements — IFCT measured the food, nobody measured your kitchen. Substitute your own and the arithmetic still works.
A plain veg thali
Two rotis, a katori of dal and a katori of rice comes to about 15.3g of protein. A serving of sabzi adds a gram or two. That is a full meal, and it is roughly a quarter of what an adult man is meant to get in a day.
How much you need
ICMR-NIN’s 2020 recommendation is 0.83g of protein per kg of body weight per day, down from the 1g/kg figure set in 2010 — which is still the number most Indian health articles quote.
- Adult man · 65kg reference
- 54g
- Adult woman · 55kg reference
- 45.7g
per day
per day
The footnote nobody quotes
Table 2a carries a footnote: for people eating a cereal-based diet with lower-quality protein, the requirement is 1g/kg per day, not 0.83. For a 65kg adult that is 65g rather than 54g — about 20% more, for the diet most of the country actually eats. ICMR also gives a target ratio for fixing the quality problem: cereal to legume to milk at 3:1:2.5.
This is a sauce company’s website
So it is worth saying plainly: the best ways to get protein into an Indian diet are the ones in the table above. Dal, paneer, eggs, soya, chana, milk. They are cheaper than anything we will ever sell you and they have been working for a very long time.
wheyway makes a sauce with 15g of protein per 80g serving. It is not a replacement for any of that. It is for the case where you were going to put a condiment on the food anyway, and the condiment might as well carry protein instead of just calories. That is the whole argument, and it is a small one.
See what it actually isSources and method
- Food composition
- Indian Food Composition Tables 2017, National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR), Hyderabad. 528 foods, each sampled as a composite from up to 6 regions of India; the national value is the mean of those regional means and the ± is their standard deviation. The 30 foods on this page are pulled from that dataset by food code at build time, not transcribed.
- Requirements
- Nutrient Requirements for Indians (RDA and EAR), ICMR-NIN 2020, Table 2a. EAR 0.66g/kg/day, RDA 0.83g/kg/day, and the cereal-based-diet footnote at 1g/kg/day.
- What is ours
- The portion weights in “Turning that table into a plate” — how much dry dal a katori is made from, and so on. Those are ordinary household quantities and they are the only estimates on this page. Everything else is a published measurement.