Measuring food in grams or ounces?

ssajwa1

Watched a couple of YouTube videos during lunch today and I noticed that most of the individuals were measuring using grams. I have a food scale and I have been measuring primarily meat in ounces. I've been using measuring cups and spoons -- but watched a video that it was better to weigh on the food scale. I've been eating a lot of raw veggies, some fruit, and prepackaged items.

It's been roughly a month, and I'm already eyeballing portions. I want to be more diligent with my food diary when I'm preparing my meals.

Now I'm wondering if it makes a difference to weigh food in grams vs ounces.

Thoughts?

Jules_farmgirl

I do both! My scale does both and I measure based on what the label says or even what I can find in the MFP data base. If I find chicken breast and it's based on ounces? I dont convert I just weight in ounces.

As long as your tracking accurately it won't matter what unit of measurement you go by

ssajwa1

Thanks!

pebble4321

As long as you are measuring accurately and finding relevant database entries I don't think it matters.

But, to put it into perspective, just about every country in the world besides the US (and one or two other rare exceptions) use metric measurements, and it seems that even US uses grams for a lot of things, so you will obviously find references to grams out there on the internet. So my advice - catch up with the rest of the world and use grams

ninerbuff

Mine does both, but I believe grams are more accurate and EASIER to convert if you ate a portion of a serving.
If one doesn't know math well, how does one convert it if they ate 1/6 of a 6oz steak?


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Jules_farmgirl

Just over 28g..... heheheh....

kami3006

They're both accurate; grams are more precise. Either work fine as long as you're able to do conversions when needed.

lemurcat12

Doesn't make much difference, but I prefer grams. US food labels will have grams as an alternative when cups are used, and the USDA entries (my primary source) has 100 g options for a serving size, and logging 43 grams as .43 of 100 grams is way easier than messing with oz conversions. Plus, now that I'm used to grams I have a sense of them and like them. Despite growing up in the Imperial system and intuitively knowing lb for other things, oz don't mean much to me (I rarely dealt with things that small before getting into food weighing).

Plus, my prior experience with food scales was for baking and I used grams then.

sgt1372

I measure everything in ounces..

It's an old habit that at 66 I'm not going to change now. Can't "think" in terms of grams, liters or meters. Only in ounces, pounds, gallons and feet, etc.

Never found it a problem in using MFP to track my food intake.

Whenever there's a food entry that I want to use that's listed in metric, I just change the measurement in the listing to ounces in my food log and enter how ever many ounces as measured. MFP allows you to do this quite easily.

Whenever I eat just a fraction of a listed serving, I just divide the weight of what I ate by the listed weight of the serving For example, if the listing for 1 serving is for 6 ounces and I only ate 4, I just divide 4 by 6 which equals .667 which I enter as the serving amount. MFP will then change the amount of the listing to 4 ounces in my log.

It's simple and there's no need to resort to metric unless you really want to do so.

livingleanlivingclean

sgt1372 wrote: »

I measure everything in ounces..

It's an old habit that at 66 I'm not going to change now. Can't "think" in terms of grams, liters or meters. Only in ounces, pounds, gallons and feet, etc.

Never found it a problem in using MFP to track my food intake.

Whenever there's a food entry that I want to use that's listed in metric, I just change the measurement in the listing to ounces in my food log and enter how ever many ounces as measured. MFP allows you to do this quite easily.

Whenever I eat just a fraction of a listed serving, I just divide the weight of what I ate by the listed weight of the serving For example, if the listing for 1 serving is for 6 ounces and I only ate 4, I just divide 4 by 6 which equals .667 which I enter as the serving amount. MFP will then change the amount of the listing to 4 ounces in my log.

It's simple and there's no need to resort to metric unless you really want to do so.

And coming from Australia, where we don't do ounces, I only know how to work in grams!

dutchandkiwi

I can do both - but I totally prefer grams - Just the decimal system is so much easier to deal with.
My scale can also do both but I never if they are US or UK measurements (yes there is a difference)

The main thing IMO is that you weigh vs measure volume (cups etc)

markrgeary1

I find it easier to log grams. Use the usda 100 grams servings makes the conversion so easy.

glassyo

I prefer grams too. You're actually eliminating the math conversion step that way. I mean, really, how often is a chicken breast EXACTLY 4 oz?

MamaRiss

I prefer to use grams, as it is just slightly more precise, and the math is easier.

atjays

Personally I use grams which convert nicely to milliliters when measuring liquids. Nearly 1 to 1 for most things. Haven't come across any packaging that didn't list a serving size in grams (in addition to ounces) and it just feels more precise and cleaner conversions.

JaxxieKat

I typically use grams, but only because I try and aim for the package serving size and those are measured by the gram. It just makes logging more convenient.