For its various advantages, jaggery has been utilised widely over the years. Jaggery is also referred to as "medicinal sugar" because it is widely used in Ayurveda. It is made by boiling or processing sugarcane juice, which is produced from the "Saccharum officinarum" sugarcane plant. Other names for jaggery include gud, vellam, Bella, and bellam. 

It is either consumed directly or used to make a variety of meals with sweet bases in the Indian diet. Several traditional sweet foods, including karadantu, godhi huggi, chikki, gazak, and payasam, among others, are made with jaggery.1 This healthy unrefined sugar has a number of advantages. Consuming jaggery regularly may assist with asthma, colds, coughs, anaemia, and function as a natural cleanser. Let's learn more about this delicious superfood.

Jaggery's nutritional value is broken down into the several nutrients it contains, which are listed in the table below. They include a wide range of nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, proteins, and antioxidants including selenium, Vitamins A, C, and E.

Nutritional components	Value per 100g
Energy	383 Kcal
Sucrose	65-85 g
Protein	0.4 g
Fats	0.1 g
Vitamin C	7.0 mg
Vitamin E	111.3 mg
Vitamin A	3.8 mg
Vitamin B5	0.01 mg
Vitamin B6	0.01 mg
Vitamin B2	0.06 mg
Vitamin B1	0.01 mg
Potassium	10-56 mg
Phosphorus	20-90 mg
Calcium	40-100 mg
Magnesium	70-90 mg
Sodium	19-30 mg
Copper	0.1-0.9 mg
Iron	10-13 mg
Zinc	0.2-0.4 mg

 

There are several uses for jaggery:

• Sambhar and Gujarati dishes gain a sweet flavour from it.
• Jaggery is used to make a number of traditional sweet dishes, including chikki, laddus, etc. As a result, it is frequently used in place of white sugar as a sweetener in the food sector.
• Without jaggery, the well-known Maharashtrian cuisine "Puranpoli" is incomplete.