The Nutrition in Pani Puri

Pani puris fry quickly.

Pani puris fry quickly.

Pani puri, also known as golgappa, gup chup or other regional names, is a fried street food. Traditionally, you eat pani puris in a single bite, which allows the array of flavors to combine in your mouth as you chew. Pani puris are made by deep-frying stuffed, unleavened flatbread. Onions, potatoes, tamarind, salt and chickpeas mixed with a variety of spices are common ingredients for the stuffing. One serving is five pani puris.


One serving of pani puris usually weighs 2.5 ounces. In a 2.5-ounce serving of pani puris, you consume about 100 calories. That’s 5 percent of a typical 2,000-calorie daily value, or DV. The flatbread dough, oil and potatoes in the filling account for most of the calories. Eliminating the potatoes from the filing reduces the calories to around 80 per serving.

Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium

Each 2.5-ounce helping of pani puris has about 4 grams of fat, mostly from the frying oil. Of the fat, 2 grams are saturated. You eat 6 percent of a 65-gram fat DV and 10 percent of a 20-gram saturated fat DV with each serving. Reducing the fat would require eliminating the oil that is essential to cooking pani puris. You also consume 210 milligrams of sodium with one serving of pani puris. A healthful sodium DV is 2,400 milligrams; 2.5 ounces of pani puris has 9 percent of that. Eliminating the salt from the filling nearly cuts the sodium content in half. There is no cholesterol in pani puris.

Protein, Carbohydrates and Fiber

One 2.5-ounce serving of pani puris has 2 grams of protein, or 4 percent of a 50-gram protein DV. Adding ground chicken increases the protein by 12 grams and adding peanut butter increases it by 7 grams. The carbohydrate content of each serving is 18 grams, mostly from the flatbread. A DV is 300 grams of carbs; you eat 6 percent of that with each helping. You also get 1 gram, or 4 percent of a 25-gram DV, of fiber.

Vitamins and Minerals

A 2.5-ounce helping of pani puris has 1 milligram of iron, or 5 percent of an 18-milligram DV. Iron is essential for keeping your blood oxygenated. You also consume trace amounts of magnesium, manganese, potassium, folate, zinc and vitamins A, B-6, B-12, C and D with every serving of pani puris.

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