Healthy Food in Indore: Poha, Sarafa and 56 Dukan, With Calories and Protein

Poha mornings, namkeen afternoons, Sarafa nights: what healthy means in Indore

Indore's food is a good base for fat loss and a poor one for protein. The everyday meal is light: Indori poha, which India's official tourism site describes as lighter than the Maharashtrian version, with less oil and spice, topped with sev, onion, coriander and lime. The trouble is everything around it. Sev and mixture go on top of nearly everything, jalebi comes with breakfast, and the city's two famous food streets, Sarafa and Chhappan Dukan, run on fried snacks, milk sweets and late hours.

The ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians (2024) give clear limits for exactly those habits. They suggest restricting cooking oil to 25–30 g a day, keeping sugar to 20–25 g a day for adults and under 5% of total energy, and getting no more than 45% of calories from cereals and millets, with 10–15% from protein. A poha breakfast with jalebi, a namkeen snack and a Sarafa dessert can use up the oil and sugar for the day before dinner.

Calories and protein in Indore's favourite foods

The numbers come from three places. Cooked dishes are from INDB, the Indian Nutrient Databank, an open set of 1,014 recipes whose values are built up from ICMR-NIN's composition tables. Single ingredients are from IFCT 2017. Sev is from CoFID, the UK government's food tables, which happen to include a lab-analysed homemade sev. Sarafa and namkeen-shop versions, with more oil, ghee or sugar, will run higher.

Indori poha, rebuilt for fat loss and muscle

Poha is a sensible breakfast with one weakness: about 4.8 g of protein in a 177 kcal bowl. That's fine for a light start, but it won't keep you full until lunch, and it does little for muscle. The fix is to keep the poha and change what goes with it. The sev is the part that adds calories fastest: 20 g of sev adds more energy than half the bowl of poha it sits on, for only 3.8 g of protein.

And the jalebi? India's tourism site notes that in winter Indore drinks doodh-jalebi, hot jalebis dunked in milk reduced outside sweet shops. Have it as the treat it is: one piece, on a weekend, rather than a plate every morning. If you want something sweet daily, a fruit and a glass of chaas cost far less.

Sarafa Bazaar after 8 PM: a night-market game plan

Sarafa is the reason many people visit Indore. It is a jewellery market by day; after about 8 PM, when the jewellers shut, around 225 food shops take over a street barely 20 feet wide and half a kilometre long, open until about 2 AM, according to a PTI report from August 2025. A historian quoted in that report says the night market began under the Holkars about 100 years ago, selling only milk and milk sweets, to wrestlers from local akharas coming from their training. The Indore Municipal Corporation calls it the city's heritage and rejected a 2025 demand to move it.

The signature dishes are rich by design. Bhutte ka kees is grated corn roasted in ghee and cooked in milk with spices. Garadu is a yam cut into cubes, deep-fried and dusted with chaat masala and lime. Sabudana khichdi at Sarafa is mixed by hand with onion, coriander, chilli, lime and sev. Shikanji here isn't lemonade: it's a thick milk drink with dry fruit and spices, the milk reduced for 12 hours. If Sarafa is a weekly habit, these orders keep it reasonable:

Chhappan Dukan: 56 shops and a clean street-food tag

Chhappan Dukan, or 56 Dukan, in Palasia, is Indore's other food street: 56 food shops within about 200 metres. It began in 1974 when the local administration allotted small shops to mobile vendors, and in 2020 Indore Smart City Development Limited redeveloped it as a no-vehicle smart food street for about ₹4 crore. In 2019 the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India declared it a Clean Street Food Hub: every shop must be FSSAI-registered and display its licence number, staff wear gloves, RO water must be available and food is served in stainless steel.

Clean is not the same as light. 56 Dukan's shops sell a wide mix of street food, fast food and sweets alongside Indore's own snacks. The same rules work here as at Sarafa: decide on one thing before you arrive, share it, and drink chaas or water rather than shakes. A vegetable sandwich or a plate of sprouts chaat is a better pick than anything with cheese, butter or a second scoop.

High-protein vegetarian eating in Indore

Many Indore homes are vegetarian, and the city's favourite foods are low in protein for their calories, so protein needs to be added on purpose. The ICMR-NIN guidelines' balanced plate for 2,000 kcal includes 85 g of pulses and legumes, 300 ml of milk or curd, and 35 g of nuts and seeds each day, and they advise against protein supplements for building muscle, preferring food. Work out your own target with the protein intake calculator.

• Swap the breakfast base sometimes: a large stuffed moong dal chilla gives about 15.9 g of protein, against 4.8 g in a bowl of poha.
• Dal at lunch, every day: a bowl of whole moong with tadka is about 143 kcal with 7.3 g of protein.
• Chaas instead of shikanji or cold drinks: about 5.7 g of protein in a tall glass for 80 kcal.
• Paneer at dinner: 75 g gives about 14 g of protein for about 229 kcal by IFCT 2017 values.
• Eggs if you eat them: two boiled eggs add about 13 g of protein for about 137 kcal.

Our guides to protein in Indian food and the high-protein vegetarian Indian diet go further, and calories in Indian food covers dishes beyond Indore's.

A 1,680 kcal day of Indore food

Add up the INDB and IFCT values above and this Indori day comes to roughly 1,680 kcal with 79 g of protein, chai with milk included. Pile on raw salad at lunch and dinner; it adds next to nothing.

Vegetarian? Swap the eggs for a bowl of cucumber raita: the day is about 1,630 kcal and 72 g of protein. Losing fat: find your own number with the calorie deficit calculator, and keep a Sarafa night inside the week's total rather than on top of it. Building muscle: add a third chapati and a second bowl of dal, and train with gradually heavier loads.

Healthy food delivery and cafes in Indore: what to check

Search for healthy food in Indore and you'll find salad bars, diet cafes, meal subscriptions and delivery kitchens. We don't review them, but the same checks work for any of them, and for the office canteen at Crystal IT Park:

• Protein per meal: look for at least 20 g at lunch and dinner. Two chapatis and a bowl of dal give about 11–12 g, so the meal needs paneer, curd, sprouts or eggs as well.
• Oil and sev: ask how much oil goes in, and whether sev or mixture is sprinkled on top. A "diet" bowl with a heap of sev isn't one.
• Sugar in drinks: cold coffee and shakes can carry more sugar than the guidelines' 20–25 g for the whole day.
• Cost per gram of protein: home dal, curd and paneer are hard to beat. A subscription is worth it only if it saves you real time.

To keep moving between meals, our guides to running tracks in Indore, cycling in Indore and treks near Indore cover the city's outdoors. Comparing costs? See personal trainer fees in Indore. For training at home, there's Personal Home Training in Indore, or Personal Gym Training in Indore for your existing gym. Start at online personal training in Indore for how it all works.