Every food page rates the food for four goals, worked out for a normal serving from the food's own numbers.
- Where the numbers come from: the Indian Food Composition Tables 2017, National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR), or USDA FoodData Central for the few foods the Indian tables lack.
- Who picks the rating: no person does. The rules pick every rating, so a rating can't know your reports. That part happens on your call.
Puja is reviewing the thresholds in the table below. Until she has read a kind of page herself, those pages say the numbers were worked out by Poshan Labs, not that she wrote them.
The four goals and their colours:Weight lossPCOS and PCODDiabetesMenopause
What decides the rating
| Goal | Good choice when | Limit when |
|---|---|---|
| Weight loss | 60 kcal or less per 100 g, or at least 2.5 g of fibre or 8 g of protein per 100 kcal | 60% or more of its calories from fat, with under 5 g of protein per 100 kcal |
| Diabetes | 10 g of carbohydrate or less per serving with no more than 6 g of it sugar, or fibre at least 15% of the carbohydrate with 5 g of sugar or less and no more than 22 g of carbohydrate | More than 15 g of sugar per serving, or more than 25 g of carbohydrate with fibre under 5% of it |
| PCOS and PCOD | Both the weight loss and the diabetes rules rate it good, or the diabetes rule rates it good and a serving has at least 8 g of protein | Either of those rules says limit |
| Menopause | At least 100 mg of calcium or 6 g of protein per serving, with 10 g of sugar or less | More than 15 g of sugar per serving |
| Oils and ghee | Never | Always, with the calories in one teaspoon |
| Sugar and jaggery | Never | Always |
| Maida (refined flour) | Never | For weight loss, PCOS and diabetes, because the bran is milled away |
- In between: anything in between is Eat in moderation.
- Menopause: a food that is fine but not a standout for calcium or protein reads Fine as part of a meal; one held back by its sugar still reads Eat in moderation.
- Missing numbers: a number that was never measured is left out, never counted as zero.
Exceptions
- Nuts and oil seeds: always Eat in moderation for weight loss: good food, but a serving is a lot of calories.
- Dense sweet foods: foods over 150 kcal per 100 g that get 40% or more of their calories from sugar, like dates and raisins, are Eat in moderation for weight loss too, even with their fibre.
- PCOS: also uses the weight-loss rule, so nuts and seeds read Eat in moderation there too, and the sweet ones Eat in moderation or Limit. For diabetes and menopause they are rated from their numbers.
- Spices: Fine in small amounts, because a pinch never changes your day.
- By the spoon: mustard and garden cress (halim) seeds, used a teaspoon at a time, and tamarind and lemon juice, used by the spoon for sourness, are rated like spices too.
- Onion: the one item from the spice shelf rated as a vegetable, because you eat it by the onion, not the pinch.
- Khoa: held at Eat in moderation for diabetes because 59% of its calories come from fat, even though a 20 g piece has only 3.3 g of carbohydrate.
- Iron: not part of the menopause rule. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements lists 18 mg of iron a day for women aged 19 to 50 and 8 mg for adults 51 and older. If you still have periods, iron still matters.
Servings
Servings are household amounts, set food by food. Each food page names its own. The usual ones:
- Cooked rice: one katori (40 g raw)
- Atta: one roti's worth (30 g)
- Cooked dal: a katori (30 g dry)
- Most vegetables and fruit: 100 g
- Nuts: a small handful (15 g)
- Oils and sugar: one teaspoon (5 g)
- Milk: one glass (200 g)
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