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thali

thali is an R package for the Indian Food Composition Tables (IFCT) 2017, published by the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), ICMR, Hyderabad. The data covers 528 Indian foods across 12 nutrient categories.

Named after the thali, the Indian platter that puts a whole meal on one plate.

Installation 

# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("saketkc/thali")

What’s in the data

Table Content Foods
thali_proximate Protein, fat, carbs, fibre, energy 528
thali_vitamins_water B1–B9, vitamin C 529
thali_vitamins_fat Tocopherols, vitamin K, retinol, vitamin D 528
thali_carotenoids Lutein, zeaxanthin, carotenes, lycopene 329
thali_minerals Ca, Fe, Mg, P, K, Na, Zn, Se, and 12 trace elements 528
thali_sugars Starch, fructose, glucose, sucrose, maltose 314
thali_fatty_acids Individual saturated and monounsaturated FAs 505
thali_amino_acids 10 essential + 8 non-essential amino acids 411
thali_organic_acids Oxalate, citric, malic, tartaric, and others 195
thali_polyphenols 33 compounds across phenolic acids, flavones, catechins 252
thali_oligosaccharides Raffinose, stachyose, phytosterols, phytic acid, saponins 186
thali_edible_oils Fatty acid % of 13 Indian oils and fats 13

Every table has a matching _se counterpart (e.g. thali_proximate_se) with standard errors, NA where not reported.

Quick start 

library(thali)

# Search for a food item
search_food("dal")

# Get its amino acid profile
get_nutrition("Bengal gram", table = "amino_acids")

# All nutrients for one food
food_profile("Egg")

# Compose a meal and scale by portion weight
meal <- compose_meal(c(
  "Rice"        = 150,
  "Bengal gram" = 100,
  "Spinach"     = 80,
  "Milk"        = 100
))
meal$proximate

Visualisation 

# Nutrient fingerprint radar: one panel per category
thali_plot(c("Rice" = 150, "Bengal gram" = 100, "Spinach" = 80, "Milk" = 100))

# Overlay two meals for comparison
thali_plot(list(
  "Rice-based"  = c("Rice" = 150, "Bengal gram" = 100, "Spinach" = 80),
  "Wheat-based" = c("Wheat flour" = 150, "Red gram" = 100, "Spinach" = 80)
))

# Top-20 iron sources among leafy vegetables
plot_ranked(
  table      = "minerals",
  nutrient   = "Iron_Fe(mg)",
  se_table   = thali_minerals_se,
  food_group = "Green Leafy Vegetables"
)

# PCA of amino acid profiles
pca <- run_pca("amino_acids")
plot_pca(pca, title = "Amino acid profiles: IFCT 2017")

Sampling regions

NIN/ICMR sampled foods across six geographical regions. thali_regions maps each region to its compositing centre and constituent states. decode_region() converts a state name to its region.

thali_regions

decode_region(c("Kerala", "Punjab", "Assam"))
# [1] "South" "North" "Northeast"

Reference

National Institute of Nutrition, ICMR (2017). Indian Food Composition Tables 2017. NIN, Hyderabad. https://www.nin.res.in/ebooks/IFCT2017.pdf