Logging food

moonbeams896

Hey everyone,

It's summer, so it's watermelon season! I cut up a fresh watermelon and now I'm trying to log it. I see "1 cup" is 65 calories, so I measured 8 oz. Is that what they mean?

rosebarnalice

Weigh it instead! Your measurement will be much more accurate

moonbeams896

rosebarnalice wrote: »

Weigh it instead! Your measurement will be much more accurate

I meant that I weighed out 8 oz.

middlehaitch

If you weighed it look for the entry that gives you the weight not cup measurement.
Using the weight of an item and the appropriate entry is always preferable.

Try- watermelon, no rind.

Cheers, h.

kshama2001

The entry that MFP pulled from the USDA database is "Watermelon, raw"

Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I use the “SR Legacy” tab - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)

lynn_glenmont

moonbeams896 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

It's summer, so it's watermelon season! I cut up a fresh watermelon and now I'm trying to log it. I see "1 cup" is 65 calories, so I measured 8 oz. Is that what they mean?

No. A cup is a volume measure equal to 8 fluid ounces. It only equal 8 ounces by weight for water and things that have the same specific density as water (and even then it doesn't really -- there are cups of different volumes in different countries, for one thing).

According to the USDA, a cup of watermelon weighs 155 g, whereas 8 oz. (weight measurement) is about 227 g, so weighing out 8 ounces of watermelon and recording it as a "cup" of watermelon, you're undercounting.

And then of course there's the whole question of how large the pieces of watermelon are in the USDA's one-cup measure. The smaller the pieces you cut something in, the greater amount of mass you'll be able to get into a particular volume, because there will be less wasted air space between the pieces.

moonbeams896

Thanks. That's why I was asking. I'll correct how I log it.