How many teaspoons of sugar in a roti?

Roti, also called chapati, is an unleavened flatbread cooked on a flat griddle called a tava. Dr Unwin’s South Asian foods chart lists it as “Roti (wheat)” at 40g, about one medium homemade roti. Restaurant rotis, and rotis brushed with ghee, are often larger.

The flour traditionally used is atta, a finely ground whole-wheat flour. The chart gives the wheat roti a glycaemic index of 57, at the low end of the medium band. The next row on the chart is a roti made with almond flour, so the chart shows two versions of the same food one above the other.

The South Asian chart prints a GI and a teaspoon figure for each food but no glycaemic load. The load on this page was worked backwards from the teaspoon figure, which adds no new information but lets every food page show the same measures.

Roti is rarely eaten on its own. It is torn and used to scoop up dal, vegetables, yoghurt or meat, and the chart describes each food as if eaten separately. Fat and protein eaten at the same meal tend to slow the rise in blood glucose, and the calculator does not try to model that.

Several foods often served with roti are on the same chart: red lentils, raita, bitter gourd and poppadom.