How Katori calculates its numbers

By Shivam Verma, FounderPublished October 17, 2026Last updated October 17, 2026

Every number on Katori belongs to a stated recipe: the ingredients for one serving, in grams, valued from USDA FoodData Central records and rounded once. Each dish shows its home, restaurant and dhaba versions, because the kitchen changes the number. The sources are linked, the corrections are public, and every assumption is stated.

How a number is made

Each dish page states one recipe for one serving, in grams: the lentils, the ghee, the onion, the water. The headline number is that one preparation and nothing else. The spread sits underneath it in a table of versions, home, restaurant and dhaba where it differs, because one dish name covers foods that genuinely differ.

For 6 of the 45 dishes today (dal makhani, sambar, dal tadka, moong dal, chana dal and masoor dal), that recipe is code. The grams are multiplied by the USDA values for each ingredient and summed, so the page cannot quote a figure its own recipe does not produce. The other 39 dishes state their recipe in the same format and move onto the same engine cluster by cluster. Their Sources lists already name the USDA records for their main ingredients.

There is one rounding rule. Everything is worked out from unrounded totals and rounded once, at the end: calories to the nearest whole number, and protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre to one decimal. A figure is never rounded and then multiplied again.

Where the values come from

Ingredient values come from USDA FoodData Central, the US Department of Agriculture's public food composition database. Every record we rely on is named by its ID on the page that uses it, so a reader can follow a number back to the exact food USDA measured.

IFCT 2017, the Indian Food Composition Tables from the ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition, is the more India-specific reference, and we use it only to cross-check. Its copyright does not allow its values to be stored electronically in a product without written permission, so none of them are kept in our data.

USDA also publishes survey records for whole dishes, among them naan, roti, paratha, dosa, idli, samosa, palak paneer and three kinds of biryani. Those are cross-checks too, listed on the dish pages, and never the source of a headline figure.

Paneer is a special case. USDA's survey record for paneer is modelled from whole milk with the whey's milk sugar kept in, which real paneer drains away. So the paneer pages list four USDA Branded label records for paneer sold in the US instead.

Soya chaap has no USDA record at all. Its numbers rest on packaged brand labels and on a manufacturer's own lab testing, both shown on the nutrition data audit.

Portions and units

A katori here is 150 ml, the small steel bowl on a thali. That holds about 150 g of dal, because dal weighs close to water. Rice is lighter for its volume, and it is usually served a little above level, so a katori of rice is counted as 120 g. The katori guide sets out the arithmetic and the USDA cup weights behind it.

A US cup is 240 ml. For dal it holds 240 g, the weight USDA's survey record for dal (FDC 2707427) gives one cup. UK, Canadian and Australian cups are 250 ml, about 4 percent more, and the cup figures on each dish page say so.

Home, restaurant and dhaba

The kitchen moves the number. Of the 45 dishes, 13 publish their own home, restaurant and dhaba versions.

For 22 more, the dhaba figure is derived: the restaurant version plus 6 g of ghee, about 54 calories, which is the median extra fat between the restaurant and richer versions on the dishes that publish both. Another 6 dishes do not meaningfully change with the kitchen, so one figure stands for all three. For the last 4 (poha, roti, dosa and sambar), the dhaba setting reads the restaurant figure, because there the two are the same thing.

Measured on our own versions, the restaurant figure sits 11 to 52 percent above home across 29 dishes, 23 percent at the median, and most of the gap is fat. The homemade vs restaurant guide works through it dish by dish.

What the numbers cannot tell you

A table cannot know which preparation is on your plate. The same katori of dal makhani is 162, 213 or 257 calories depending on the butter and cream, and nothing in the dish name says which one you are eating. Your katori may not be our katori, and the oil a cook pours is invisible once it is in the dish.

That gap is why the Katori app estimates your actual plate from a photo.

Each dish page also carries a confidence label, high or medium. It is a plain-English judgement of how well the recipe is anchored. It is not a statistical interval: we did not sample a population of plates.

How studies are used

A study appears on a page only where that page makes a claim the study supports, and only after the claim has been checked against the study's abstract on PubMed. Every study is linked through doi.org, so the link lands on the paper itself.

Glycemic index is never published as our own value for a dish. It is measured in people, not calculated from ingredients, so where a page discusses it, the page quotes a named study's result. The roti vs rice guide, for example, cites a Delhi trial in which a dal meal with rotis and the same meal with rice gave almost the same glycemic index.

Corrections

Corrections are public. When a number changes, the page that carried it says so, and the corrections section of the nutrition data audit keeps the full list.

Two examples. In September 2026 we corrected rice: a katori had been listed as 150 g, the bowl's volume read as grams, and it is now counted at 120 g as served, on the rice, jeera rice and veg pulao pages. On October 14, 2026 we recomputed 6 dals from their own stated recipes, because the old figures did not match those recipes; each of those dal pages shows its old and new numbers.

The date on a page moves only when what the page says changes.

How this site is written

Pages are drafted with the help of AI writing tools. The numbers are not: every figure comes from the stated recipe and USDA records, computed in code for the recipe-backed dishes and moving there for the rest, and every sentence is read and approved by Shivam Verma before it is published.

Shivam Verma founded Katori, and the story of why is on the story page.

Photos come from Pexels and Unsplash under their free licences. Each one is checked by eye, captioned with what is actually in it and credited to the photographer.

There are no paid placements, no affiliate links and no invented ratings or reviews. We never invent a number, never publish a diet plan without a registered dietitian, and never present an estimate as medical advice.

If a number looks wrong to you, write to info@getkatori.com. What we fix is listed in the audit's corrections section.

Sources

Common questions

Why are your numbers different from other calorie apps?

Many calorie databases list one number for a dish name without the recipe behind it, so you cannot tell which version of the dish it describes. Every figure here belongs to a stated recipe and a stated serving, and each dish shows its home, restaurant and dhaba versions. When two figures disagree, the recipe usually explains why.

Why don't you use IFCT values directly?

IFCT 2017 is the more India-specific reference, but its copyright does not allow its values to be stored in a product without written permission from ICMR-NIN. So we use it to cross-check our figures and keep none of its values in our data, until permission is granted.

Do you use AI to write this site?

Yes, for drafting. Pages are drafted with the help of AI writing tools, but the numbers do not come from them: they come from the stated recipes and USDA records. Every sentence is read and approved by Shivam Verma before it is published.

How do I report a wrong number?

Email info@getkatori.com with the page and the figure. If it is wrong, we fix it, say so on the page, and add it to the corrections section of the nutrition data audit.

These figures are estimates from stated recipes, for general information. They are not medical or dietary advice. If you manage a health condition, check with a registered dietitian or your doctor.

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