How do you quantify carbs in Indian soups?

[mysorian]

Most South Indian families eat Rasam, or Sambhar with rice or chapati. Both Rasam and Sambhar have carbohydrates from the cereals and vegetables in them. It is not easy to count the carbs as these are not standardized items with each family having its own recipe. These are not minor components of meals either. How do you meaningfully and regularly quantify the carbohydrate content in a sustainable program?

I agree to add the carbohydrate values of the ingredients but are carbohydrate values additive?

 

[JenniferM55]

Whenever I make a dish from a recipe I add the ingredients of the recipe into the Cronometer app > Foods > Custom Recipes.

A potion of the recipe can be weighed and served with the carb total calculated. Other food apps do the same such as Fatsecret, MyFitnessPal, CarbManager, there are others.

 

[mysorian]

I am not sure if there are some South Indian users on this platform, who would be looking at this problem as they consume these preparations day in and day out. It will be cumbersome to do a reasonable count of carbs with complex preparations. measuring each time.

 

[Paul_]

I am not sure if there are some South Indian users on this platform, who would be looking at this problem as they consume these preparations day in and day out. It will be cumbersome to do a reasonable count of carbs with complex preparations. measuring each time.

As I've recently found out, when first diagnosed one of the main burdens of diabetes is the management overhead. Counting carbs, tracking what you eat, blood glucose readings, and the time it takes to adapt your diet and lifestyle from what it was before to what it now needs to be.

There aren't any shortcuts when it comes to carb counting, at least none that I've found. As @JenniferM55 posted above, the only way to properly assess carb content of homemade meals is to measure out each and every ingredient. Using an app then makes it easier to find out the total carbs per serving. From there, you'll then need to measure the ingredients every time you make the meal, so you can ensure the end result matches the meal you've previously calculated the carb values for. Over time you might be able to do this by eye, but that comes with a risk of your meal containing more carbs than ideal due to inaccurate recipe measurements. Indian cooking relies on a lot of spices, which are high carb ingredients. When consuming small quantities per serving, their high carb nature doesn't particularly matter, however if the amount of any particular spice isn't measured properly then carbs can creep up quickly.

It's a burden of managing diabetes unfortunately.

 

[HSSS]

I don’t think this is unique to South Indian dishes. It applies to any home cooked dish of any origin. My solution is to weigh each ingredient and calculate carbs for each and then add them together. Add it all up for both weight and carbs. Eg 50g carbs in 500g of food. So each 100g of the meal is 10g of carbs.

Then so long as you make it the same way and know how much of it you are eating at each sitting you have the carb values.

 

[JenniferM55]

A few times a month I make vegetable soup, I've created my custom recipe on a food app, but I don't stick to it every time as the ingredients depend on what's in the fridge at the time. When I cook up a pot of veg soup I edit my custom recipe to take into account what's in the pot.

 

[saky]

I check my blood sugar after eating rasam and sambar. These days I make keto sambar with no dal in it. Rice/chapati I don't eat. ..I eat keto rotis made from soy flour or flax seed flour and grated veggies. That way cabs are less...