Using a scale

browneyes1520

So I have always used a scale to measure out some stuff like meat and cheese but predominantly use measuring cups to measure my food. But I kept seeing on here people over and over and over again saying measuring cups aren't accurate and u should use a scale for everything except liquids. I decided to give it a try. It was eye opening and soooo disappointing. My test was the oats I eat every day. Oats make me happy cuz it's a large portion for not many calories and paired with a couple eggs keeps me full til close to 1pm. My oat bag says 1/2 cup (40g) dry = 150 calories. So I filled up my half cup measure then slowly started pouring them onto the scale. Turns out a serving is not half a cup it's more like a third of a cup. That's a big difference. How can they be allowed to be so inaccurate on the packaging. It doesn't make sense to me. Very frustrating. I suppose everything will be like that too.

diannethegeek

You may find a few things where you get more, but yes weighing is really eye opening (and seriously depressing for some foods).

My big moment was sweet potatoes. MFP and I have very different ideas about what a "medium" sweet potato looks like.

jcota315

Weighing is the most accurate way to go. Having worked in many commercial kitchens I learned to love a scale. Many of the volume measures posted on packaging are what you could call "pre-settled" volumes. This really comes into play with milled items. The recommendation for home cooks is to spoon or pre-set ingredients when measuring. Scooping straight from the container tends to compact your ingredients. The nice thing is most packers will give you both measures on the nutritional information label. At home I tend to go with the rule that you should measure the way the manufacturer does. If it's sold by weight weigh it.

End of ramble

Cynsonya

It's been said here that the FDA allows a 20% variance either way in packaged food nutritional info. That's why it's so important to weigh even packaged foods. For example, even prepackaged protein bars may have an incorrect weight.

kimny72

The nutrition info is supposed to be correct for the serving size weight, and the volume measurement or other (like 12 chips or 1 slice) is an estimation, unfortunately it's often a poor estimation.
I too had a sad moment with oats and my kitchen scale, but I found a serving of gelato was larger than I would have eyeballed or measured, so that was nice