How many teaspoons of sugar in millet?

Millet is not a single grain. The name covers several small-seeded cereal grasses, including pearl millet (bajra), finger millet (ragi), foxtail millet and proso millet, eaten across India, Africa and parts of Asia. In South Asia, millets are cooked into porridge, made into flatbreads such as bajra roti, or boiled like rice.

The South Asian foods chart lists “Millet, boiled” at 100g, about half a cup, without naming which millet. The GI tables include several millets with quite different values, so the variety is a real source of uncertainty for this row.

The chart gives a glycaemic index of 65, in the medium band. It prints the teaspoon figure but no glycaemic load, which was back-calculated for this page.

Millets are often described as traditional or ancient grains, and the United Nations named 2023 the International Year of Millets. The figure here describes a boiled grain in terms of blood glucose only. It says nothing about the protein, fibre or minerals the grain contains.

The chart does not give a cooking time or the ratio of water to grain. Millet can be cooked to separate, fluffy grains or to a soft porridge, and softer, longer-cooked grains are generally digested more easily.

Other grains on the same chart are boiled rice and wheat in the form of roti.