Luqaimat calories per 100 g, and how to count a piece

Luqaimat, whose name means little morsels, are small balls of soft dough fried until golden and finished with date syrup (dibs) or a sugar syrup. A fixture of iftar across the Gulf, they are also spelled legaimat, lgeimat or luqaymat.

The Food Composition Tables for the Kingdom of Bahrain list them as Legaimaat among the composite dishes, which were prepared in homes in Bahrain and analysed in the laboratory. There is one row, for one recipe that is not printed, so nothing here says how much flour, sugar or oil went in, how big the balls were or how they were cooked. Read it as a measurement of that recipe, not a standard for every plate.

This is what most readers want to know, and the tables leave it open. They do not record whether the luqaimat were sampled after the syrup went on, before it, or with only what clung to them, so this page gives no with-syrup figure, no without-syrup figure and no adjustment between them.

It matters because syrup changes both sides of the sum. Date syrup and sugar syrup are mostly sugar, so they add carbohydrate, and they add weight, which changes what 100 g of luqaimat contains. A guessed syrup adjustment would only dress an estimate in a precise-looking number, so use the published row as a starting point either way.

Carbohydrate dominates at 44.4 g per 100 g. Fat comes next at 9.5 g, which fits a fried dough, although the tables record neither the cooking method nor the oil. Protein is small at 3 g, and fibre barely registers at 0.5 g.

Fat weighs much less than carbohydrate here, but gram for gram it carries more than twice the energy, so it is a real part of the total. For macro tracking, luqaimat count almost entirely as carbohydrate and fat; with about three times as much fat as protein, the protein in that meal has to come from another dish.

A search for luqaimat calories per piece is really a question about weight. No source here publishes a piece weight, and a ball's size depends on the cook, the spoon or hand that drops the dough and the syrup it carries, so this page does not assume one. Your own plate can supply it.

1. Weigh several pieces. Zero a plate on a kitchen scale and count ten or more luqaimat onto it, served as you eat them, with or without syrup. Sizes vary within a batch, so several give a steadier average than one.
2. Divide the total grams by the number of pieces. That is the average piece weight for this batch; another kitchen's or café's may differ.
3. Enter the grams in the food calorie calculator after searching for luqaimat: the average piece weight for one piece, or the total weight for the whole plate.
4. Keep the syrup caveat with the answer. The calculator scales the same record as this page, so it carries the same unknown. Extra syrup or honey added at the table is a separate food, left out rather than guessed when the calculator has no row for it.

The calorie calculator then sets the result against an estimated daily target, and the macro calculator shows how much of your carbohydrate and fat it uses. Each is an estimate: the row measures one recipe, and your plate comes from another.

Luqaimat usually share the iftar table with dates. Per 100 g in the same Bahrain tables, luqaimat measured less energy than dried dates (tamr) and more than fresh dates (rutab), with far more fat than either, since dates contain very little. The dates page has both rows on the same basis.

For a whole fasting day, the Ramadan meal plan spreads calories, protein and fluid across iftar, an evening meal and suhoor, and sets protein separately because a short eating window makes it easy to miss. Luqaimat add little of it, so if they replace a meal, protein is what goes missing. The Ramadan fitness guide covers training, hydration and recovery around the fast.

• Cheese-filled luqaimat, or ones finished with honey, chocolate sauce or another syrup.
• Baked or air-fried versions; the tables describe the analysed luqaimat only as home-prepared.
• Luqaimat from a particular café, bakery or frozen pack in the UAE. The Bahrain tables were published in 2011, and recipes and sizes vary.

Foods with no usable published analysis yet are listed with the reason on the food calories page; the sweets that were analysed are in its sweets table.

Everything here is general information, not medical or dietetic advice: if you have a medical condition, are fasting on a doctor's advice or keep to a prescribed diet, talk to your doctor or a registered dietitian about where sweets belong in it.