How many teaspoons of sugar in raita?

Raita is a cool yogurt side dish served with South Asian meals. It is usually made with plain yogurt and grated or chopped cucumber, seasoned with salt and roasted cumin, sometimes with mint or coriander. Other versions use onion, tomato, boondi (small fried gram-flour pearls) or fruit.

Dr Unwin’s South Asian foods chart lists raita at 100g with a glycaemic index of 20, in the low band. The chart does not give a recipe or say which vegetables or seasonings its raita contained.

Most of the carbohydrate in a plain cucumber raita comes from the lactose in the yogurt, with a little from the cucumber. A boondi raita adds fried gram flour, and a fruit raita, such as pineapple raita, adds fruit sugars. Neither would be expected to give the same figure as a plain cucumber raita.

The chart prints the GI and the teaspoon figure but no glycaemic load, so the load on this page was back-calculated. At a figure this small, the one-decimal rounding on the chart makes that load approximate.

Raita is usually eaten in small amounts beside rice, biryani, roti or dal, and 100g is a generous side serving. In the calculator each food is added separately, so a plate can be built up from its parts: basmati rice, wheat roti and raita are all on the same chart.