Upma calories: cup/katori and 100 g

Semolina or broken wheat

Made with broken wheat (dalia) in place of semolina, the katori is 227 calories against 235, with 6.8 g of fibre against 2.9 g and 6.4 g of protein. USDA has no broken wheat record, so we count dalia as bulgur, which is cracked wheat: our stated proxy. Per 100 g it is 151 against 157.

A study at the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation tested twelve traditional Indian foods with standard glycaemic index methods and placed broken wheat upma among the three in its low GI group. That is their recipe, not ours, and the study did not test semolina upma. Its authors also found that being made from whole grain did not on its own make a food low GI.^[16]

Ghee and cashews

A restaurant or wedding upma is cooked in ghee and finished with cashews. Our restaurant katori uses 8 g of ghee and 5 g of cashews, 28 calories of nuts, for 280 calories and 10.7 g of fat, 5.4 g of it saturated against 1.0 g at home. A cup of it is 448.

Against USDA's survey record

USDA's survey record for upma is 87 calories per 100 g, and ours is 80 percent above it. It weighs a cup at 170 g. The record is a much wetter dish: about 14 g of dry Cream of Wheat in every 100 g of its recipe, against 30 g of semolina in ours, with a large share of tomato, onion and water. A thinner upma is lighter per gram for exactly that reason.^[15]

With chutney and sambar

Upma usually comes with coconut chutney, and in many South Indian homes and canteens with a katori of sambar too. With 30 g of chutney the katori is 312 calories and 12.8 g of fat, against 6.6 g for the upma alone; the chutney is 77 of those calories. With sambar instead it is 345.

Upma against poha and rice

A katori of upma at 235 sits close to a plate of home poha, 270 calories for 140 g, and above two idli at 122. Gram for gram it is 157 against 130 for plain boiled rice. It also carries more protein than either breakfast: 6.6 g against 5.6 g for the poha plate and 4.0 g for two idli.

Is upma healthy?

It is mainly carbohydrate: 37.0 g in a katori, 64 percent of the energy from its macronutrients, with protein at 11 percent, 6.6 g. That is a fair amount of protein for a grain dish, from the wheat itself, but upma is a carbohydrate food first. A katori has 2.9 g of fibre, or 6.8 g made with broken wheat.

One katori of upma carries 6.6 g of protein and 6.6 g of fat, 1.0 g of it saturated: 2.8 g of protein for every 100 calories. The ghee page sets the NHS and American Heart Association limits for saturated fat side by side.