No single food is fattening on its own: weight comes from eating more energy than you use, over time. A wrap of eba (200g) has about 189 kcal, which is ordinary for a swallow.
Why eba gets a bad name
Most calorie figures online are for dry garri, roughly 357 kcal per 100g. Prepared eba is mostly water and comes to about 95 kcal per 100g. Count your eba with the dry figure and you overstate it about 3.8 times.
Eba against other swallows
Weight for weight, eba is the 2nd lightest of 8 swallows. It has almost no protein or fat: 98% of its energy is carbohydrate.
Swallows per 100g, lightest first
Amala
kcal per 100g
85
kcal per serving
169
Eba (Garri)
kcal per 100g
95
kcal per serving
189
Wheat Swallow
kcal per 100g
102
kcal per serving
204
Pounded Yam
kcal per 100g
104
kcal per serving
207
Fufu / Akpu
kcal per 100g
105
kcal per serving
210
Lafun (Cassava flour)
kcal per 100g
105
kcal per serving
209
Tuwo Shinkafa
kcal per 100g
109
kcal per serving
218
Semo
kcal per 100g
117
kcal per serving
234
The soup is the bigger number
A wrap of eba with a ladle of egusi comes to about 495 kcal, and the soup is the larger part of it. If you want to eat eba and lose weight, keep to one wrap, go easy on the oil in the soup, and make sure there is protein on the plate.
Not sure how many calories you need a day? The calculator works it out from your height, weight, age and activity, the same way the app does.
Work out your daily calories →
Figures are estimates for typical home-cooked portions, from measured Nigerian portion studies, USDA FoodData Central and the FAO/INFOODS West African food tables. Not medical advice.
Count your own plate in one photo.
CalChopAI reads a photo of your food and counts the calories, protein, carbs and fat, Nigerian food included.