How many teaspoons of sugar in chickpeas?

Chickpeas, known in South Asia as chana or kabuli chana, are among the most widely eaten legumes in the world, used in chana masala, hummus, falafel and many soups and stews. Gram flour, or besan, is milled from a smaller, darker variety, split and ground.

Dr Unwin’s South Asian foods chart lists chickpeas cooked, at 100g, about two thirds of a cup. That is a cooked weight, unlike the red lentils directly above them on the chart, which are weighed dry.

The chart gives a glycaemic index of 28, in the low band. Like other legumes, chickpeas hold their carbohydrate as starch alongside protein and fibre, much of it inside cell walls that cooking softens but does not fully break down. The chart prints no glycaemic load, so the load on this page was back-calculated from the teaspoon figure.

Tinned and home-cooked chickpeas are both sold and used as cooked chickpeas, and the chart does not say which it measured. Hummus is a different food, with tahini and oil added and the chickpeas puréed.

The poppadom on the same chart is often made from lentil or chickpea flour, and has its own page: poppadom. In the calculator, more than one portion of chickpeas can be added for a larger bowl.