Indian food exchange list (IFCT 2017)

What a food exchange list is, and how Indian dietitians use it

An exchange list groups foods so that one weighed portion of anything in a group gives about the same energy, protein, carbohydrate and fat. You prescribe the day in exchanges, for example cereal, pulse, milk, vegetable, fruit and fat exchanges per meal, and the client fills each one with what they like and can get.

That is what makes exchanges work across Indian kitchens: within a group a client can swap roti for rice, jowar for bajra, moong dal for masoor dal or guava for papaya without the plan's totals moving much. Swaps across groups are a different matter. Dal for paneer trades a pulse exchange for a protein exchange that carries more fat, so the lookup shows each portion's kcal, protein, carbs and fat beside the exchange it stands for.

How this tool works out one exchange

Each IFCT food group is mapped to an IDA exchange group: cereals and millets to cereal; grain legumes to pulse; leafy and other vegetables and mushrooms to vegetable A; roots and tubers to vegetable B; fruits to fruit; milk to milk; egg, poultry, meat, fish and shellfish to meat; nuts, oilseeds, oils and fats to fat; sugars to sugar. Paneer is counted as a protein (meat group) exchange, as in Nutrena's own IDA lists.

The portion is then matched on the group's defining nutrient, the way exchange lists are built: carbohydrate for cereals, vegetables, fruit and sugar; protein for pulses, milk and meat; fat for fats. Grams for one exchange = 100 × the nutrient in one exchange ÷ the nutrient in 100 g of the food, rounded to the nearest 5 g (to the nearest gram below 20 g). One cereal exchange has 18 g carbohydrate and raw milled rice has 78.2 g per 100 g, so 100 × 18 ÷ 78.2 = 23 g, rounded to 25 g.

Only one nutrient is matched, so the others can drift. When a portion's energy is more than 40% above or below the exchange's, the tool flags it and says where the difference comes from. Energy is IFCT's own figure, converted from kJ (÷ 4.184); for the oils and fats it is computed from fat with IFCT's factor of 37 kJ per gram.

Raw foods, edible portion: the limits

IFCT 2017 reports nutrients per 100 g of edible portion (peel, seeds and bones removed), and the foods are raw unless the name says otherwise. So the grams for rice, atta or dal are dry weights; the cooked katori weighs far more for the same exchange. Convert to household measures with your own recipes and standard katoris. Table values are averages of the samples analysed, and a given batch of a food will differ.

IFCT covers individual foods, not recipes. For cooked dishes such as dal tadka, idli or poha per serving, see the Indian food database. In Nutrena's meal planner, a database of 20,000+ foods, including 8,000+ Indian dishes, totals each plan's kcal and macros automatically as you build it.

Source

Nutrient values: Longvah T, Ananthan R, Bhaskarachary K, Venkaiah K. Indian Food Composition Tables 2017. National Institute of Nutrition (ICMR), Hyderabad.

Exchange reference values: Indian Dietetic Association values as used in Nutrena's clinical exchange prescription (table above). The grams for one exchange are Nutrena's calculation from IFCT values, not an official IDA list.