What is besan, and is it the same as corn flour?

Besan is chickpea flour — dried chickpeas ground fine. It's also sold as gram flour. It is not corn flour: cornflour (cornstarch) is almost pure starch made from maize. For a sensitive gut the two behave very differently. Besan models at 6.4 out of 10 on the GASP Score, because ground chickpeas keep the GOS — the rapidly fermentable sugars that legumes are known for. Cornflour models at 0.2, rice flour and potato starch at 0.4. These are modelled estimates, not medical advice.

Is besan the same as gram flour?

In most shops and recipes, yes — besan, gram flour and chana flour all mean flour ground from dried chickpeas. Some brands grind split brown chickpeas (chana dal) rather than the pale kabuli chickpea, which changes the flavour slightly but not the way it behaves in your gut.

No. Besan is ground chickpeas. Cornflour (cornstarch) is a starch made from maize. They both thicken and bind, so recipes sometimes treat them as interchangeable, but they score very differently on the GASP Score — besan models at 6.4 out of 10 and cornflour at 0.2.

Chickpea flour is high in GOS, one of the FODMAP groups, because the whole dried chickpea is ground in and nothing is drained off. Boiled or canned-and-drained chickpeas lose some of their GOS to the cooking water; besan doesn't. Serving size matters a lot — small amounts are a different proposition from a large serve.

What can I use instead of besan?

Rice flour is the closest swap for batters and pakora and models at 0.4. Cornflour (0.2) works for thickening sauces, potato starch (0.4) for binding fritters and patties, and tapioca flour (0.3) for gluten-free baking.

Is besan gluten free?

Yes — chickpeas contain no gluten, so besan is naturally gluten free. That's separate from how it scores here: gluten free doesn't mean gentle, and besan is a good example of the difference.

What is besan? Chickpea flour vs corn flour, and how each scores

Besan is simply chickpea flour— dried chickpeas ground to a fine, pale yellow powder. You'll see it sold as gram flouror chana flour, and it's the base of pakora, bhaji, besan chilla, and the socca and farinata of southern Europe. It's naturally gluten free, high in protein, and it thickens and binds beautifully, which is why it turns up in so many recipes.

No — besan isn't corn flour

This is the mix-up we see most often, and it matters more than it sounds. In New Zealand, the UK and Australia, cornflour means cornstarch— the fine white powder you slake with water to thicken a sauce. It's made from maize and it's close to pure starch. (In the United States, confusingly, "corn flour" can mean finely ground cornmeal, which is a different thing again — that's polenta territory.)

Besan is ground legume. Cornflour is ground starch. They swap in for each other in a recipe far more easily than they swap in for each other in your gut:

Flour	What it's made from	GASP Score
Besan / chickpea flour	Ground dried chickpeas	6.4
Cornflour / cornstarch	Starch from maize	0.2
Polenta / cornmeal	Coarsely ground maize	1.9

Higher means rougher on a sensitive gut. Lower means gentler.

Why besan scores as high as it does

Chickpeas are rich in GOS (galacto-oligosaccharides) — a group of carbohydrates that pass through the small intestine largely undigested, then get fermented quickly by gut bacteria further down. That fermentation is what produces wind, and for a lot of people it also means looser, faster output.

Whole chickpeas get some relief from cooking: GOS is water-soluble, so boiling and draining or rinsing a can leaches a good share of it into the liquid you tip away. That's why chickpeas model at 4.8 boiled and drained, and 4.7 from a drained can. Besan gets none of that — the chickpea is ground whole and dry, so everything stays in the flour. Nothing is poured off, so nothing is left behind.

That's the whole story of the 6.4: it isn't that besan is a bad food, it's that grinding keeps in what boiling would have taken out.

Gentler swaps for besan

If besan doesn't sit well with you, several everyday flours do a similar job and model much lower. Which one you reach for depends on what the besan was doing:

Instead of besan	Best for	GASP Score
Cornflour / cornstarch	Thickening sauces, curries and gravies	0.2
Tapioca flour	Chew and stretch in gluten-free baking	0.3
Rice flour	Crisp batters — the closest swap for pakora	0.4
Potato starch	Binding patties and fritters	0.4
Plain wheat flour	General baking, if gluten isn't an issue for you	2.6

For a pakora or a fritter, rice flour is the swap most people reach for first — it fries up crisp and light, and at 0.4 it's a long way down from 6.4. A spoonful of cornflour alongside it helps everything hold together.

Cook once, two versions

You don't have to make two dinners to make this work. Mix the vegetables, spice and liquid as one batter base, then split it: rice flour into your half, besan into theirs. The family gets the pakora they know, you get the same plate and the same night, without the fallout. Same meal — yours is the gentle version.

If you'd like to keep besan

A 6.4 isn't a verdict, and plenty of people manage besan perfectly well. Portion tends to do most of the work — GOS is dose-related, so a thin besan chilla is a different proposition from a plateful of pakora. Many people find it easier alongside a binding base like rice or smooth potato, and away from other high-GOS foods in the same meal. Your own body is the honest test.

You can look up besan, cornflour and anything else in your cupboard on the food scores, or read more about the foods that help firm up loose output.

Written and checked from lived experience with a J-pouch. Last updated August 2026. The GASP Score is a modelled estimate, not medical advice — always work alongside your own clinical team.

Scores are modelled estimates, not medical advice. Everyone's gut is different, and tolerance changes over time. Reintroduce foods one at a time, and follow your own medical team's advice.