ALLOW MEASURMENTS IN GRAMS EVERYWHERE!!!

asd3412r5t1freasd

I search to find others share my frustration that you measure all your food in grams then occasionally MFP says screw you....find the 1 out of 20 in grams but here's 19 in fluid oz first. Wth....

I just don't get it. I'm typing in my breakfast today, all going well. Then Garbonzo beans only in cups??? Who measures beans in cups? Requires me to google for a converter and get a weird answer of 0.11 cups.

I don't care how or why it's like that based on what is answered in other posts about this. I just want everything to have one measuring standard. Grams. Always show grams please!

springlering62

For many foods (not all) if you double tap the “serving size” box, you’ll get a drop down box that will allow you to change the unit of measurement.

For example, a standard half cup of cottage cheese is 113gr on every container I’ve seen (and I eat a ton, various brands, in various states and countries).



For those other times, it’s helpful to remember that a tsp is usually 3-4 gr, a tbsp 15 gr, a cup of all purpose flour 120gr, and (for small quick measurements) a cup aka 8 oz is 240 gr.

So if my buttermilk biscuit recipe calls for 3/4 c buttermilk, it’s easy to quickly calculate that as 180 gr.

Fluid measurements aren’t perfect that way, but unless you are measuring large units of fluids, it’s accurate enough.

I prefer grams after a long time on MFP, but if they changed the standard measurement on this American based app, you’d have an army of people vociferously complaining that they want imperial. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Don’t stress. Ease of use comes with practice.

cmriverside

I would just add that the Food database is 99% created by crowd-sourcing and prior to 2011 or so all the foods that anyone entered were shared to the Public database by default so you'll find millions of entries that are not usable for one reason or another. They may be wrong in the nutrients, the portions, the calories. So, the members add the foods the way they want them to be measured, whether that be grams, cups, milliliters, ounces, pieces or any other allowable entry.

The best/easiest way is to add your own foods to the database. Then they will be the way you want them, and they'll be in your "My Foods" list.

What I do is use a unique-to-me descriptor in the naming of the food. That way the Search filter will pull up "my" entries every time. Takes 30 seconds to enter a new food, but worth it in my opinion.

FWIW I have a chickpeas by grams. I use only grams, too. :flowerforyou:

yirara

Yeah, only gram user here as well. And everything they other said. I just wish there was a way to search for foods, with a filter for units.

springlering62

A filter would be great.

asd3412r5t1freasd

Yeah I don't give any *kitten* about the copy/pasta reply at top or anything else. People probably ask this question often, because this app not having grams as constant measurement makes it an annoying *kitten* pain.

It makes no sense and if the admit or bosses or whatever fixed it they'd get more interest, AND MORE MONEY.

Or add a filter like that person said ^

This is ridiculously frustrating and destroys the usability of this app. *kitten* fix it.

GRAMS. CAN YOU HEAR ME. GRAMS.

cmriverside

asd3412r5t1freasd wrote: »

Yeah I don't give any *kitten* about the copy/pasta reply at top or anything else. People probably ask this question often, because this app not having grams as constant measurement makes it an annoying *kitten* pain.

It makes no sense and if the admit or bosses or whatever fixed it they'd get more interest, AND MORE MONEY.

Or add a filter like that person said ^

This is ridiculously frustrating and destroys the usability of this app. *kitten* fix it.

GRAMS. CAN YOU HEAR ME. GRAMS.

What copy/paste reply do you mean?

You could/should post your complaint in the "Suggestions" subforum. The only people who will reply here in "Getting Started" are other regular users. STAFF DOES NOT monitor this forum - at all.


Those of us replying have found a way to make it work for us and we are using grams. And no, this is not a common complaint because there are workarounds that are fast and easy.

Try using "grams" in your Search when you're looking. That helps.

(see my screen shot below. There are dozens of chickpeas listed by grams in that, "Matching Foods," search result box.)

cmriverside

AnnPT77

Grams filter on search is a good idea.

Grams as a value on all database items is a pipe dream, for sure given a crowd-sourced database, and very likely not even achievable with a curated centrally-created database.

For just one reason, most but not all US labels have grams, and a large chunk of MFP users are in the US. For sure, the majority of restaurant entries - even ones straight off the restaurant's site - don't have grams.

In those cases, the crowd (or MFP staff) can't be trotting around weighing every restaurant dish or product not labeled in grams for others' convenience. Not even theoretically achievable in the real world.

Many, many items already have grams in the drop-down. Ironically, some of the very most accurate items - loaded from the USDA food database at MFP start-up - default to cups, but have grams in the drop-down. IMU, MFP adds grams as an option nowadays if a product is labeled and initially entered in any weight measure. Grams are in the drop-down.

I weigh my food in grams whenever possible, and use grams entries. IME - 9 years worth - it's not that hard, after a short learning curve. A filter would make it even easier.

Sometimes, when I need to estimate food, I appreciate that there are other options, like inches/cm, cups, sometimes even per package or piece.

There's a design tradeoff underneath this.

A centrally created database may be more controlled, therefore potentially more accurate. (Not necessarily accurate, because products change over time, and differ between countries.) But such a database is unlikely to keep up as quickly with new products or reformulations, so users will need to fully enter more foods themselves as private foods.

A crowd-sourced database like MFP's is likely to be more comprehensive, but with less reliable accuracy. We need to search more carefully at first, but add items less often. Good entries for items logged recently will stay in our recent/frequent foods, and come up first on search, defaulting to the units we last used. (As someone else noted, you can create all your own entries, if you wish: They'll be saved in My Foods in MFP, entered just the way you like them.)

If you don't like MFP's design choice, there are logging apps out there with stronger curation. They might make you happier.

Complaining it about it here is profitless. You're just talking to other MFP users with no more power than you have. MFP staff don't read every Community post in every area. That would be huge effort, little benefit.

If you have ideas or complaints about MFP, post them in Feature Suggestions. The staff reads that.

Alatariel75

I use grams wherever possible to track my food, and have just gotten used to finding entries with grams, and have come to terms with the fact that some entries simply won't have them. Screaming into the void about it doesn't seem to be a useful application of my time.

To be honest, in the time I've been on MFP it's gone through 3 owners. The first ones were pretty innovative and things for upgraded and changed. UA came along, and they seemed to be trying to make improvements also (though there were some changes around that time, in particular with the community, which were unpopular and caused a lot of people to stop engaging), and then it was sold to the current lot and they've done very little with it since (except take away things like the newsfeed, made barcode scanning a paid feature, and add dubiously helpful things like scan-a-plate). They don't even seem to react to reports of blatantly inaccurate green checked foods, so demands for wholescale changes and improvements to the database are, in my view, a waste of energy. I've learned to make it work for me, and it does what I need it to do, for free, and I'm too complacent to find somewhere else.

lynn_glenmont

If we're talking about packaged/manufactured food (e.g., bread, cold cereal, canned soup, frozen burrito), I have the package I got the food out of so that I can compare the label to the database entry to be sure it's accurate. I'll use an accurate entry where the user selected the volume measure rather than one where they used grams but the calories and a few other macros/micros I care about are wrong

I can easily use the info on the label (e.g.: serving size 1/2 cup (134 grams)) to calculate how many servings I had in grams.

springlering62

asd3412r5t1freasd wrote: »

Yeah I don't give any *kitten* about the copy/pasta reply at top or anything else. People probably ask this question often, because this app not having grams as constant measurement makes it an annoying *kitten* pain.

It makes no sense and if the admit or bosses or whatever fixed it they'd get more interest, AND MORE MONEY.

Or add a filter like that person said ^

This is ridiculously frustrating and destroys the usability of this app. *kitten* fix it.

GRAMS. CAN YOU HEAR ME. GRAMS.

There’s no copy paste here. There’s a lot of folks that have taken their own personal time and effort to give you a reasoned and considered reply.

The app has to be all things to all people and, this being the USA, most people don’t give a flying flip about grams.

If you’d take as much time to make a fast workaround as you do to bellyache about it not serving you, well, I’m sorry for you.

I did, and it works fine for me, and I’m most definitely a child of the Imperial Era. (Translation: “Boomer”.)

Hobartlemagne

It really is crazy that this isnt a feature. I know MFP is based in the US, which prefers impereal measurements, but Nutrition Facts are ALWAYS determined in metric.

It really should look like this:

rileysowner

If you want to be really frustrated, in Canada there are a whole bunch of foods that are not liquids but the serving sizes are only given in milliliters or cups. Things like canned fruits and veggies, ice cream, and the like are all serving sizes in volume measurements. It drives me crazy.

tuckahoe88

Wow...what a tempest in a teapot. Such passion for something so trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Elphaba1313

asd3412r5t1freasd wrote: »

Yeah I don't give any *kitten* about the copy/pasta reply at top or anything else. People probably ask this question often, because this app not having grams as constant measurement makes it an annoying *kitten* pain.

It makes no sense and if the admit or bosses or whatever fixed it they'd get more interest, AND MORE MONEY.

Or add a filter like that person said ^

This is ridiculously frustrating and destroys the usability of this app. *kitten* fix it.

GRAMS. CAN YOU HEAR ME. GRAMS.

Such anger! Who hurt you? Do you need a hug?

SafariGalNYC

asd3412r5t1freasd wrote: »

Yeah I don't give any *kitten* about the copy/pasta reply at top or anything else. People probably ask this question often, because this app not having grams as constant measurement makes it an annoying *kitten* pain.

It makes no sense and if the admit or bosses or whatever fixed it they'd get more interest, AND MORE MONEY.

Or add a filter like that person said ^

This is ridiculously frustrating and destroys the usability of this app. *kitten* fix it.

GRAMS. CAN YOU HEAR ME. GRAMS.

Or you could just do math. Ounces to grams. Imperial to metric .

1 ounce =28.35 grams

Or input own foods with grams option.

Also - just checked my own food diary. Everything I have is grams… 🤷‍♀️ every input I have a grams option.. every single food. Am I seeing a different version?

sollyn23l2

SafariGalNYC wrote: »

asd3412r5t1freasd wrote: »

Yeah I don't give any *kitten* about the copy/pasta reply at top or anything else. People probably ask this question often, because this app not having grams as constant measurement makes it an annoying *kitten* pain.

It makes no sense and if the admit or bosses or whatever fixed it they'd get more interest, AND MORE MONEY.

Or add a filter like that person said ^

This is ridiculously frustrating and destroys the usability of this app. *kitten* fix it.

GRAMS. CAN YOU HEAR ME. GRAMS.

Or you could just do math. Ounces to grams. Imperial to metric .

1 ounce =28.35 grams

Or input own foods with grams option.

Also - just checked my own food diary. Everything I have is grams… 🤷‍♀️ every input I have a grams option.. every single food. Am I seeing a different version?

Agreed. I'm guessing they don't realize there's a drop down menu under servings. I rarely see a food that doesn't have grams also.