How many teaspoons of sugar in yam flour?

Yam flour, known in Yoruba as elubo, is made from yam that has been peeled, sliced, parboiled, dried and ground. Drying darkens it, which is why amala, the dough made by stirring yam flour into boiling water, is brown rather than white. Amala is eaten widely in south-western Nigeria, often with soups such as ewedu and gbegiri.

The African and Caribbean foods chart lists yam flour at 100g of dry flour. Like cassava flour, its row runs past the edge of the chart and is marked with an arrow. A dry flour concentrates the carbohydrate of the fresh tuber, so this is a figure for an ingredient, not for a plate of amala, which contains a large amount of added water.

The chart has no row for amala. It does have one for boiled white yam at 150g, the fresh tuber cooked in water.

As with the rest of this chart, no glycaemic index or glycaemic load is printed, and the load shown here was back-calculated from the teaspoon figure. The heat used in parboiling and drying, and the fineness of the grind, both affect how quickly the starch in a flour is digested, and the chart describes neither.

Yam flour is sold in bags in African grocery shops, labelled as yam flour, elubo or amala flour. Amala is also made from other flours, including cassava and unripe plantain, and the ingredients list shows which a particular bag contains.