HOW MANY CALORIES IN A CHAPATI?

The short answer: a standard 40g chapati made with atta and no ghee is about 120 calories. Brush ghee on it and it is 165. A plain naan is 280. A butter naan is 340. A bhatura is 380.

Same meal, same curry. What you put on the side can swing your plate by 500 calories.

The 12, weighed

Typical home and restaurant portions. These are not CurryFit rotis. Ours are listed separately further down.

What matters here: it is not the flour, it is the size and the fat. A naan weighs more than twice what a chapati weighs before anyone adds butter. Then it gets butter.

The same dinner, four ways

One serving of dal, one portion of sabzi. Nothing else changes.

Five hundred calories of difference, and the meal looks identical on the table.

Two butter naans instead of two plain chapatis, once a day for a month, is around 15,000 extra calories. That is roughly two kilos.

Ranked, if you are trying to lose weight

1. Phulka. Lightest thing in the kitchen. No oil on the tawa, no ghee after.
2. Chapati, no ghee. The default. Whole atta, and you know what is in it.
3. Multigrain roti. Slightly more calories, more fibre, keeps you full longer.
4. Tandoori roti. Fine, just bigger. One is worth one and a half chapatis.
5. Naan. Made with maida, twice the weight, no real fibre. A weekend thing.
6. Paratha, puri, bhatura. Fried or layered with fat. Treat them as a treat.

This is about calories, not morality. Bhatura on a Sunday is not the reason anyone gained weight. Bhatura on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday might be.

The rotis we make at CurryFit

This is the only section on this page with CurryFit food in it.

Most kitchens give you one roti. We make eight, because "which roti" is a different answer depending on whether you are cutting calories, training, avoiding wheat, or just eating dinner.

1. Whole wheat chapati or phulka

No oil, no ghee, nothing brushed on after. Plain whole atta. The lightest wheat roti we make and the default on most plans.

2. Whole wheat paratha

Same atta, one brush of ghee. Softer and more satisfying. The ghee is measured, not poured.

3. Multigrain roti, our own blend

Whole wheat flour, soybean, roasted black gram (dalia dal), barley, corn, horse beans (mudira) and ragi. Seven flours in one roti. More protein and more fibre than plain atta, which means it holds you longer.

4. Millet roti

Light, mild and naturally wheat free. The lowest carb load of our grain rotis after quinoa.

5. Ragi roti

Finger millet. Wheat free, high in fibre, earthy and slightly nutty. Heavier than people expect, which is the honest bit most sites leave out.

6. Quinoa roti

Wheat free and the lowest calorie roti we make. Lighter than it sounds.

7. Oat flour roti

Soft, mild and high in soluble fibre. The easiest one to switch to if you are used to plain chapati.

8. Keto roti

Chia seed, flax seed and almond flour. No grain at all. Very low carb, high in fat and protein, built for people eating ketogenic.

These are our numbers, per roti, as we make them.

Our multigrain house blend is not in the table yet. We are finalising its numbers and will add them here.

Two things worth noticing. Our chapati is 86 calories against a typical 120, so two of ours is 172 against 680 for two butter naans. And ragi at 120 calories is heavier than our plain chapati, not lighter. People assume ragi is automatically the diet option. It is not. It is a different grain with more fibre.

Four of these are made without wheat. Millet, ragi, quinoa and oat flour, plus the keto roti which uses no grain at all. If you are cutting down on wheat, you do not have to give up roti. You give up one flour.

Now the gluten question

Ask around and half the people you know are cutting down on wheat. So here is what the evidence actually says, because there is a lot of noise on this one.

Are humans naturally gluten sensitive?

No. Most people digest gluten without any issue at all.

Coeliac disease is the real condition. It is an autoimmune disease, not an intolerance. In people who have it, gluten damages the lining of the small intestine. It affects roughly 1 in 100 people worldwide, and closer to 0.7 in 100 when confirmed by biopsy. It is serious, lifelong, and needs a proper diagnosis.

You also need the genes for it. Coeliac disease only develops in people carrying HLA-DQ2 or HLA-DQ8. Around 30 to 40 percent of people carry those genes. Most of them never develop it.

Then there is everyone else. A 2025 review in the journal Gut pooled 25 studies covering nearly 50,000 people across 16 countries. About 10 percent said they react to gluten or wheat.

Here is the catch. When researchers test those people properly, blind, with gluten hidden in identical food, most do not react to gluten.

So what are people reacting to?

The best evidence points at fructans, not gluten.

In a 2018 trial at Oslo University Hospital, 59 people who had put themselves on gluten free diets ate identical muesli bars containing either gluten, fructans, or nothing, without knowing which. The fructan bars caused significantly more bloating and symptoms. The gluten bars were no different from the placebo.

Fructans are a carbohydrate found in wheat, but also in onion, garlic, cabbage, beans and plenty of other food. They ferment in the gut. In some people that means gas and bloating.

Which explains a lot. Someone cuts out wheat, feels better, and blames gluten. They also cut out the pizza, the pastries, the sandwiches and the biscuits. Something in there was the problem. It may not have been the gluten.

So why does it feel like this came out of nowhere?

Four things happened at once, and none of them is "gluten got worse".

We got much better at finding it. Coeliac disease was considered rare until blood testing became routine. It was not rare. It was missed. Most of the rise in diagnoses is a rise in detection.

Wheat is not what changed, the amount of it did. Researchers looked directly at whether modern wheat breeding raised gluten levels. A 2013 analysis in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found no evidence that it did. Gluten content has stayed broadly flat for a century. What went up is how much wheat we eat, and in what form.

The form matters. Traditional atta is whole wheat, stone ground, rested and cooked fresh on a tawa. Modern wheat mostly reaches us as maida in packaged loaves, biscuits, noodles, pizza, rusks and snacks, made with fast industrial fermentation. Slow fermentation breaks down a chunk of the fructans before you ever eat it. Fast production skips that step.

More people have IBS. Gut symptoms are common, and wheat is an easy thing to blame because we eat it constantly.

There is a pattern in the data that says the same thing. Coeliac disease in India tracks wheat intake almost exactly. In the north, where adults eat around 455g of wheat a day, prevalence is about 1.23 percent. In the north east, 37g a day, 0.87 percent. In the south, 25g a day, 0.10 percent. The genetics are spread evenly across all three regions. The wheat is not.

Then how did our grandparents eat roti daily and stay lean?

They did, and it was not because the wheat was magic.

• The roti was different. Chakki ground whole atta, bran included. More fibre, slower digestion, more chewing. Not maida.
• The plate around it was different. Roti, dal, sabzi, a little curd. Small amounts of oil. Meat occasionally, not daily.
• The portions were smaller. Not because of willpower. Because food cost more relative to income and nobody served restaurant sizes at home.
• There was almost no snacking. No packet of biscuits at 4pm, no cold drink with dinner, no delivery app. Three meals, and the kitchen was closed in between.
• And they moved constantly. Walking to the market. Housework without machines. Physical jobs. No sitting for nine hours, then sitting in traffic, then sitting on a sofa.

That is the honest answer. Roti did not make anyone fat. Sitting still while eating three times the food did.

What to actually do

If you have real symptoms, get tested before you cut gluten out. This matters. Coeliac testing only works while you are still eating gluten. Go gluten free first and the test can come back falsely clear, and you will spend years not knowing. See a doctor first.

If coeliac is ruled out and wheat still bothers you, it may be fructans rather than gluten. A dietitian can take you through a proper elimination and reintroduction instead of a permanent ban.

If you feel fine on wheat, you do not need to cut it. Gluten free is not automatically healthier. Gluten free packaged food is often lower in fibre and higher in sugar and fat, and costs three times as much.

If you want to cut wheat without cutting roti, millet, ragi, quinoa and oat flour all work. We make all four. See the roti list above.

If your goal is weight loss, count the roti, do not fear it. That is what the table at the top of this page is for.

This is general information, not medical advice. If you think you have coeliac disease or a food intolerance, speak to a doctor.

Frequently asked questions

References

Shiha MG and others. Global prevalence of self-reported non-coeliac gluten and wheat sensitivity: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Gut, 2025.
Skodje GI and others. Fructan, rather than gluten, induces symptoms in patients with self-reported non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Gastroenterology, 2018.
Kasarda DD. Can an increase in celiac disease be attributed to an increase in the gluten content of wheat as a consequence of wheat breeding? Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2013.
Makharia GK and others. Prevalence of adult celiac disease in India: regional variations and associations, 2016.
Singh P and others. Global prevalence of celiac disease: systematic review and meta-analysis, 2018.

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