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Krish Ashok’s book Masala Lab has a section titled ‘Maida gets a dirty label but has the same level of protein as dal’.
The author goes into a fair bit of detail on the type of protein contained in maida and dynamics of how the food is digested.
Toor dal provides 343 calories from 100 uncooked grams. 24% of those calories or 22 grams of protein are contained in that serving.
Pressure cooking or steaming the dal with water can halve the value down to 9-11 grams of protein per cup as the dal absorbs water and increases in volume.
Maida provides anywhere between 350 and 400 calories of energy per cup. 11 grams or 12 % of the energy is from protein. This number can improve if the maida is enriched with gluten isolate.
Some bakers do this to improve the texture of the cookies, bread or roti they are baking. This can see the number move up to 15-16%.
If you can consume maida with restraint and enjoy the taste, you could occasionally switch your wheat rotis and/or rice with maida enriched with gluten. Paired with paneer, lentils and an ample portion of vegetables, this meal could easily contain 25-40 grams of protein. Your fiber and satiety requirements are met by the vegetables and lentils.
But the downside is the amount of maida we consume. If you’re routinely eating more than a cup of cooked rice in every meal or more than 2-3 rotis in every meal, the problem was the amount of grain consumed. The grain itself was not the problem. The amount of butter and oil used in naans, puffs, pastries and fried snacks really do increase the calorie density to a counterproductive degree.