How many calories in lentils
A plate of cooked lentils has 230 kcal, with 18 g of protein and only 1 g of fat.
Portion
To burn it off
Lentils are carbs and protein with lots of fibre and almost no fat. That mix is why a bowl of dal or lentil soup keeps you going for hours.
A 200 g plate is 230 kcal with 18 g of protein. That's more protein than most people expect from something that costs pennies.
The number moves with what you cook them in. A dal with a good amount of ghee or coconut milk is a richer thing than plain boiled lentils.
Tips
- 1Swap half the mince in a bolognese or chilli for lentils.
- 2Make a big pot of lentil soup on Sunday and take it to work in the week.
- 3Go easy on the oil at the start and add flavour with spices instead.
Where it comes from
Lentils are among the very first crops people ever farmed. They were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East, in the same early wave as wheat, barley, peas and chickpeas, roughly 10,000 years ago. Charred lentils turn up in some of the oldest farming villages of the region, in what is now Turkey, Syria and Israel.
Where does our food come from? · Source: Weiss and Zohary, The Neolithic Southwest Asian Founder Crops, Current Anthropology (University of Chicago Press)
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bowl of lentil dal
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Questions
Are red and green lentils the same?
Close enough. Cooked, they land in the same range, red ones just turn to mush quicker.
How much protein is in lentils?
About 18 g in a 200 g plate of cooked lentils.
Do tinned lentils count the same?
Yes, drained tinned lentils are the same as ones you cooked yourself.
Do lentils need soaking?
No, that's what makes them handy. Rinse them and cook: red lentils take about 15 to 20 minutes, green and brown about 20 to 30.
How many dry lentils make a 200 g plate?
About 70 g dry. They soak up water as they cook and end up close to three times their dry weight.
