How many teaspoons of sugar in red lentils?

Red lentils, masoor dal in much of South Asia, are split lentils with the brown seed coat removed, which shows the orange-red inside. They cook quickly and collapse into a soft purée, and they are the base of many everyday dals.

The South Asian foods chart lists red lentils at 100g with the word “raw” in brackets. That is a dry weight, measured before cooking. Lentils take up a great deal of water as they cook, so 100g of dry red lentils becomes a much heavier quantity of cooked dal, often enough for several servings once liquid and other ingredients are added.

The chart gives a glycaemic index of 24, in the band conventionally called low. Legumes tend to be listed with low values in the GI tables; their starch comes packaged with protein and fibre.

The chart prints the GI and the teaspoon figure but no glycaemic load. The load here was back-calculated from the teaspoon figure.

Because the portion is a dry weight, the figure does not transfer directly to a bowl of cooked dal. A pot of dal made from 100g of dry lentils and shared between several people gives each of them a share of the figure for the lentils, before any rice or bread.

Dal khichdi, a dish of rice and lentils cooked together, is on the same chart at a 200g cooked portion.