Foods From Around the World You Won’t Find in a Typical Calorie App

Try logging Tteokbokki, Thukpa, or Lamprais in a mainstream calorie-tracking app and there’s a real chance none of them exist there. Most calorie apps are built around a US or UK grocery-store dataset, branded packaged foods and a handful of the most common restaurant dishes. Our own database covers 5,200+ foods from 190+ countries, and a lot of that breadth is exactly this kind of real, specific, less commonly logged dish. Here are eight of them, each with its own real, individually calculated nutrition figures.

Eight real dishes, eight different countries

1. Buuz (Mongolian steamed dumplings): A Mongolian dumpling filled with minced meat, traditionally mutton or beef, and steamed rather than boiled or fried. Buuz are a genuine national staple, eaten year-round but especially associated with Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian Lunar New Year celebration. (Per piece, not per 100g.) Real figures: 65kcal, 3.5g protein per 100g.

2. Lamprais (Sri Lankan Dutch-Burgher rice): A Sri Lankan rice dish wrapped in a banana leaf and baked, a real fusion dish that comes from the island’s Dutch Burgher community, descendants of Dutch colonial settlers who blended Sri Lankan and Dutch cooking traditions. Real figures: 210kcal, 9g protein per 100g.

3. Thukpa (Tibetan-Nepali noodle soup): A noodle soup from the Tibetan and Nepali Himalayan region, traditionally a warming, high-altitude staple. Real figures: 85kcal, 5g protein per 100g.

4. Lahmajun (Armenian, thin meat flatbread): A thin, crisp Armenian flatbread topped with minced meat and spices, sometimes called “Armenian pizza,” though the comparison undersells how different the actual dish is. Real figures: 230kcal, 9.5g protein per 100g.

5. Zurbian (Yemeni spiced rice & meat): A Yemeni spiced rice dish layered with meat, part of the same broader family of spiced rice dishes as biryani, with its own distinct Yemeni spice profile. Real figures: 200kcal, 11g protein per 100g.

6. Plov (Uzbek, national dish, lamb & rice): Uzbekistan’s national dish, rice cooked with lamb, carrots and onions, genuinely treated as a point of national pride and served at weddings and celebrations across the country. Real figures: 190kcal, 9g protein per 100g.

7. Tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes): Korean stir-fried rice cakes in a spicy-sweet gochujang sauce, one of the most popular street foods in Korea. Real figures: 195kcal, 4g protein per 100g.

8. Banh Xeo (Vietnamese crepe): A Vietnamese savoury crepe made from rice flour and turmeric, filled with pork, shrimp and beansprouts, and traditionally eaten wrapped in lettuce and fresh herbs. Real figures: 195kcal, 5.5g protein per 100g.

Why this matters beyond novelty

None of these are obscure in the country they come from, they’re everyday, well-known dishes. What’s genuinely missing from most calorie-tracking apps isn’t rare food, it’s global food, real dishes eaten by millions of people that just never made it into a database built primarily around one country’s supermarket shelves. Every dish above has its own real page on this site, with the same full nutrition breakdown, FSA traffic lights and macro data as any UK supermarket product. Browse more of what we cover in our Takeaway & Ready Meals category.