IFCT
IFCT, the Indian Food Composition Tables, is the reference published by India's National Institute of Nutrition giving analysed nutrient values for Indian foods, including cooked dishes and household measures.
IFCT 2017 is the current edition of India's national food composition reference, produced by the National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad under the Indian Council of Medical Research. It replaced a set of tables whose core analytical work dated back decades.
What makes it useful here
Coverage of foods that Western tables handle badly or not at all: Indian cereal varieties, millets, pulses in the forms actually eaten, regional vegetables, and a set of commonly prepared dishes. It reports analysed values with sampling detail rather than estimates carried forward from older editions.
It also reports values in a way that maps onto how people eat, which is the part that matters for a food log rather than for a laboratory.
Where it is limited
Prepared dishes are analysed from a representative recipe. Yours will differ, usually in the fat. Regional variation within India is enormous and no single table can carry all of it. And like every composition table, it describes ingredients more confidently than it describes what came out of your kitchen.
How Forkbell uses it
Indian dishes and ingredients come from IFCT, generic and packaged items from USDA FoodData Central and Open Food Facts, and every figure on a page names which one it came from.
Sources
- 1.Indian Food Composition Tables 2017 — ICMR–National Institute of Nutrition
- 2.ICMR–National Institute of Nutrition — Indian Council of Medical Research
Related reading
- IFCT or USDA: which numbers should you trust?
Two national food composition tables, built for two food supplies. When each one is right, why they disagree about the same food, and what to do about it.
- Calories in a katori of dal: nine dals compared
Toor, moong, masoor, chana, urad and the rest, per katori, with the tempering counted. The lentils barely differ; the oil and cream decide everything.
- How to count calories in home-cooked food
Home cooking has no barcode and no single right answer. The pot method, the oil problem, household servings, and reusable numbers for the food you eat.
- How to calculate the calories in a recipe you cooked
A worked example from a real pot of dal: count the raw ingredients, add the fat, divide by real servings, save the number. Fifteen minutes once per recipe.