Healthy Food in Surat: Locho, Khaman, Ponk and Surti Winter Food, With Calories and Protein

Why eating well in Surat is a topping problem

Surat is proud of its food. Wikipedia quotes the old Gujarati saying that you should eat in Surat and die in Kashi, and lists the city’s specialities: locho, ghari, Surti bhusu, alupuri, kavsa, ponk, undhiyu, rasawala khaman and sev khamani. Outlook Traveller sums up the style as leaning towards indulgence, with bold spices and festive richness.

Look closely at that list and a pattern appears. Many Surti dishes start from something light, usually steamed gram flour or fresh grain, and become heavy at the counter: a drizzle of oil or butter, a fistful of sev, sweet chutney, cheese on top. So the quickest route to healthy food in Surat is to keep the base and trim the toppings. Fix that and a Surti breakfast can be one of the better-value meals in India for protein.

Locho, khaman and khamani: a Surti breakfast, counted

Locho is the dish Surat is best known for: soft, steamed gram flour served hot, topped with sev, onions and chutneys, as Outlook Traveller describes it. We couldn’t find an analysed calorie value for locho itself, so here is what we can count. Its base is besan, made from Bengal gram dal, which IFCT 2017 lists at about 329 kcal and 21.6 g of protein per 100 g raw, a good protein-to-energy ratio. The toppings are the variable part.

Khaman has an analysed value. In the Indian Nutrient Databank (INDB), a piece of khaman dhokla is about 86.5 kcal with 5.4 g of protein (216.5 kcal and 13.4 g per 100 g), so three pieces give about 260 kcal and 16 g of protein. Sev khamani, crumbled khaman under a layer of sev, is the same food with the sev table above added on top. Rasawala khaman comes in a thin gravy, so ask whether it has been sweetened before you order a second bowl.

• Order locho “less sev, less butter” and add raw onion and green chutney instead.
• Choose plain khaman over sev khamani if you want breakfast under 300 kcal.
• Go easy on sweet chutney. ICMR-NIN advises keeping added sugar below 5% of daily energy, which is only about 80 kcal on a 1,600 kcal day.
• Alupuri is built on fried puris; CoFID measures a homemade puri at 366 kcal per 100 g, so treat it as an occasional plate.

Calories and protein in everyday Surat food

Most Surti meals at home are the standard Gujarati pattern: rotli, dal or kathol, shaak, rice, chaas. These figures come from INDB, a peer-reviewed set of 1,014 Indian recipes calculated from ICMR-NIN’s food composition tables, and from IFCT 2017 itself for raw foods. Restaurant and street versions with more oil will be higher.

Two things stand out. Khakhra, the default “light” snack, carries more energy per piece than khaman but far less protein. And shrikhand, a Gujarati festive favourite, is surprisingly high in protein at about 16 g a bowl, but it carries plenty of sugar too, so it belongs with dessert rather than with protein foods.

Ponk, undhiyu and lilva: Surat’s winter food season

Winter is when Surat eats most seasonally. Ponk, tender green sorghum grains roasted over charcoal and beaten from the stalk, is sold from about November to late February, with supplies coming in from the Palej and Hazira area, according to Wikipedia. It is usually served with sev. We found no analysed value for fresh ponk, and IFCT’s jowar figure is for mature dry grain, which isn’t the same food. Fresh ponk is a whole grain and a fine snack; the sev and any butter on top decide how light it stays.

Undhiyu is eaten all over Gujarat, but Outlook Traveller notes that the Surti version is known for a richer use of oil and spice. The vegetables in it are modest in energy; the oil and the fried muthia are not. We couldn’t find a reliable analysed value for undhiyu, so use these rules instead:

1. 1

   Serve from the top

   Lift the vegetables with a slotted spoon and leave the oil in the pot. Every teaspoon of oil left behind is about 45 kcal saved.

2. 2

   Count the muthia

   Two or three fried muthia on the plate, not a ladle of them.

3. 3

   Rotli over puri

   A rotli is about 73 kcal in INDB; a homemade puri is 366 kcal per 100 g in CoFID.

4. 4

   Add a protein side

   Undhiyu is light on protein, so pair it with chaas, curd or a bowl of dal.

Fresh tuvar lilva, the green pigeon peas in so many Surti winter dishes, is the protein-friendly part of the season: IFCT 2017 lists about 124 kcal and 8.1 g of protein per 100 g raw. A lilva shaak with rotli is a much better everyday choice than lilva kachori, which is deep-fried.

Fish, eggs and chicken: protein for non-vegetarians in Surat

Surat sits close to the coast, and for people who eat them, fish and eggs are the cheapest way to raise protein without raising calories much. IFCT 2017 gives these values for raw foods, and INDB for cooked dishes:

Frying changes these numbers completely, so choose curries, tandoori and grilled fish over fried fish or batter-coated snacks. Boiled eggs beat bhurji and omelettes cooked in a lot of oil, though both are reasonable.

Healthy street food in Surat: what to order

A day of Surti food at about 1,620 kcal

This vegetarian day uses only the INDB and IFCT values above and comes to about 1,620 kcal and 75 g of protein. Dal and shaak are cooked without sugar; salad of cucumber, tomato, carrot and onion is extra and costs very little.

Eat fish? Swap the palak paneer for a bowl of fish curry: about 53 kcal more and 10 g more protein. For fat loss, ICMR-NIN’s 2024 guidelines treat about half a kilogram a week as a safe rate of loss and say reducing diets shouldn’t go below 1,000 kcal a day; the calorie deficit calculator gives your own target. For muscle gain, those guidelines put the adult protein allowance at 0.83 g per kg of body weight and note that intakes above about 1.6 g per kg add nothing more to strength-training gains; work out your number with the protein intake calculator.

For a full week of home meals, see the Gujarati diet plan for weight loss. Our guides to protein in Indian food and calories in Indian food cover hundreds more dishes.

Healthy restaurants, cafes and food delivery in Surat: a checklist

Searches for healthy restaurants, a healthy food cafe or healthy food delivery in Surat turn up dozens of options. We don’t review them, but these checks work for any menu, from Vesu cafes to a tiffin service in Adajan:

• At least 20 g of protein in lunch and dinner. Two rotli and a katori of dal give only about 11 g, so look for paneer, curd, sprouts, eggs, fish or chicken alongside.
• Ask how the dal and kadhi are made. Sweet dal, sugary rasawala gravies and fried sides undo a “diet” thali.
• Watch the oil. ICMR-NIN suggests about 20 g of visible fat a day for a sedentary woman and 30 g for a sedentary man, in total, across all meals.
• Mind the salt. The same guidelines put the limit at 5 g of salt a day, and farsan, pickles and papad add up quickly.
• Prefer food to bars and shakes. ICMR-NIN advises against protein powders for building muscle.

Keep moving between meals with our guides to running tracks in Surat and treks near Surat. Train at home with Personal Home Training in Surat, or at your gym with Personal Gym Training in Surat. For everything else, start at online personal training in Surat.