Why, Oh Why?!

...are so many non-fluid ingredients on MFP measured in fluid ounces rather than than an accurate and precise non-fluid measurement such as ounces or grams? Fluid ounces is a measure of volume, and eight fluid ounces of chopped onions is not one fluid cup - hardly ever. That cup can easily contain 10, 12, 14, or even more non-fluid ounces of chopped onions.

1 fluid ounce of milk will almost always be the same volume and mass, so will always have the same nutritional values. Who do we talk to to get MFP to use real measurements instead of misleading ones? Although it can be done,I have never measured dry ingredients by liquid measurements.

Replies

  • victoriapresscott7
    victoriapresscott7 Posts: 1 Member
    Hi how are you doing today
  • mullanphylane
    mullanphylane Posts: 172 Member
    Hi how are you doing today

    Me? I'm doing as well as any other grumpy, whiny, old man with more chronic health conditions than Carer has little liver pills. Depending on what day it is, or, even time of day, that can be grand or at the opposite end of the scale. 😜😜

    And you?
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    When you search for something you can add 'grams' to the search criteria.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    ...are so many non-fluid ingredients on MFP measured in fluid ounces rather than than an accurate and precise non-fluid measurement such as ounces or grams? Fluid ounces is a measure of volume, and eight fluid ounces of chopped onions is not one fluid cup - hardly ever. That cup can easily contain 10, 12, 14, or even more non-fluid ounces of chopped onions.

    1 fluid ounce of milk will almost always be the same volume and mass, so will always have the same nutritional values. Who do we talk to to get MFP to use real measurements instead of misleading ones? Although it can be done,I have never measured dry ingredients by liquid measurements.

    I know, it's one of the reasons I wouldn't pay for Premium. It hurts my brain that non-fluid items have fluid measurements. I used to report admin created entries with this to Support, but the process was so irritating and non-productive that I stopped.

    If I recall correctly @CyberTone said there was an update to software that caused this @ 2014. Clearly no interest in fixing it.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    harper16 wrote: »
    Because most items on mfp are listed by the users.

    This is often present in admin-created entries as well.
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    <snip>
    If I recall correctly @CyberTone said there was an update to software that caused this @ 2014. Clearly no interest in fixing it.

    This happened around the spring or summer of 2015, when MFP was planning a major update to the serving size conversion algorithms on the Android, iOS, and web versions.

    Here is an explanation I posted in October 2015.

    >>> This seems to be the result of MFP's "enhanced" feature to convert serving sizes automatically from cups to milliliters and fluid ounces when some food items are created (or verified), regardless whether the conversion passes the "common sense" test. In the US, the serving size for many solid items are provided as a portion of a cup. The cup serving size is listed on the Nutrition Facts label, usually with the number of grams in parentheses associated with that volume measurement. When some food items are created or verified with the cup information instead of the gram information, the MFP conversion algorithms assume it is a volume measurement and the software algorithm automatically converts that to milliliters and fluid ounces, and then provides an additional choice for 1 milliliter and 1 fluid ounce.
    Source: https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/34897366/#Comment_34897366 <<<
  • MaggieGirl135
    MaggieGirl135 Posts: 1,028 Member
    Thank you for the explanation! This has been a bit of an irritant.
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    I'd love for just ONE of the popular food tracking apps to make a concerted effort to have a cleaned up database. MFP allowing us to report seems to have just created a list of reported things somewhere in their system, I'd be willing to bet nobody ever looks or changes anything.