Weighing food to logg

MariaAndonova

Hi!
Any suggestions of how to weigh or measure food the right way? For example lots of food that is stored in cans that contain water. I’m really afraid I’m measuring my food wrong. Some practical questions:
1. Weighting tuna (in brine), do u totally squeeze all the water before you weigh or do u leave some of the water? The same goes for shrimps that are also sold in brine…
2. Weighting beans/legumes that are pasteurized, they are also stored in water…
This really bothers me aaaand if I don’t measure my food right, everything goes to waste… Help

lynn_glenmont

The most important thing is to weigh things in accordance with the database entry you're using. Hopefully they indicate cooked versus raw, drained versus not drained. In my experience, most package labels in the U.S. for foods that are in cans, jars, etc. with liquid that most people would drain off before serving/eating, the weights are based on the drained weight.

Also, in the U.S., the nutrition label will tell you how many servings on the package. If there's a lot of liquid, it should be pretty obvious when you weigh the drained contents whether the servings per package include the liquid or not.

I would just drain off the liquid, not squeeze the food.

DrBenja

Hi! For accurate food measurements, drain and rinse canned items like tuna, shrimp and beans before weighing.
Squeeze out excess water but don't go overboard. This ensures you're measuring the actual food content.

Hobartlemagne

grams, grams, grams, grams.
Measure in grams. Nutrition facts and math itself works best measuring grams.

AnnPT77

There are some entries in the database for specifically drained foods. Many of them (often ones that have a 1 cup default serving size) are from the USDA data that MFP loaded at start-up. Those initial load ones will have weights in the servings drop-down, not just the silly one cup thing.

For drained canned (or home cooked drained) beans, I use ones that include the words "beans cooked boiled" in the title (so I'd search for "beans black cooked boiled"), and look for an entry with no manufacturer and a 1 cup default.

This may seem elaborate, but once I figured out the "language only a bureaucrat could love" titles and the 1 cup default, no manufacturer thing, these became easy and automatic to find.

Here's an example, with the serving size drop-down expanded: