Calories and Protein in Pakistani Food: 60 Everyday Items, Per Real Serving

Most calorie tables online are American, per 100 grams, and useless for a Lahore kitchen. This is the table we use with coaching clients, built from USDA reference values for the ingredients, manufacturer labels where a food is packaged, and measured typical portions for home-cooked dishes. Every number is for one serving as people actually eat it. Use it to learn the shape of your day — which foods are protein, which are mostly oil and starch — rather than to count to the calorie.

How to read the table

• Home-cooked dishes vary by 20 percent or more between households. The difference is almost always the oil or ghee — a salan can be made with two tablespoons or six.
• Portions are what a normal adult eats in one sitting: a bowl of daal is about 200 g, a plate of biryani about 300 g, a serving of karahi about 200 g.
• Protein is the number that matters for anyone trying to lose fat or build muscle; calories decide the direction, protein decides what you keep.
• Packaged and chain items marked 'label' are the manufacturer's own figures. Everything else is an informed estimate.

Breads and rice

Curries, daal and sabzi

Notice the fat column. Bhindi is a vegetable, yet a serving has 14 g of fat — okra soaks up oil. The vegetable is not the problem; the frying is. Cooked with a teaspoon of oil in a non-stick pan the same serving is under 80 kcal.

Protein foods

Breakfast and snacks

Sweets

Drinks

The five mistakes people make with these numbers

1. 1Counting the roti but not the ghee on it. A teaspoon of ghee is 40 kcal; three rotis with ghee is 120 kcal you did not write down.
2. 2Forgetting tea. Four cups a day with two sugars each is 440 kcal — more than a plate of chana chaat — and zero protein.
3. 3Assuming biryani is 'just rice'. A plate is 550 kcal and the oil, not the rice, is why. Plain boiled rice with a chicken salan is 500 kcal with more protein.
4. 4Treating a 'serving' of salan as whatever fits on the plate. Two ladles of karahi is 200 g; four ladles is double every number in the row.
5. 5Drinking calories and thinking they do not count. A mango shake is 330 kcal — a meal — and does nothing for hunger. The same mango, eaten, is 120.

A day built from the table

Swap the mid-morning apple for a scoop of whey stirred into the dahi and the day lands at about 150 g protein for 25 kcal more. Drop the bedtime milk and it is a 1,900 kcal cutting day. No foreign food, no chicken-and-broccoli, and every item is in the tables above.

Where the numbers come from

Ingredient values are from the USDA FoodData Central database, which remains the most complete public reference for raw foods. Packaged and chain items use the manufacturer's label or published nutrition data. Home-cooked and street dishes are estimates from typical recipes and measured portions, checked against the FAO's food composition tables for South Asia; they are marked as estimates in the app we use with clients, and a coach can adjust any of them to how a particular household cooks. If your family cooks lighter or heavier than average, the protein numbers will hold and the calories will move with the oil.

This article is general information, not medical advice. If you have diabetes, kidney disease, or are pregnant, speak to your doctor before changing your diet.