food scale users--no oz./gram options for foods

andielyn

I got a food scale, went to record my food and for the first several items there is no option to record in ounces in the food database. My choices were a serving or the whole container. I thought the scale might be helpful for caloric dense items or things like a loaf of bakery bread one sliced themselves...so many people here seem to live and die by the food scale and say it's no more effort, but how do you make it work if you can't record precise ounces (or grams)?

IsisRosa

I keep looking until I find an option that has grams. The database here has a ton of repeats, so keep looking.

amberlykay1014

Can you take a second look at the food label? It will usually say something like Serving Size: 1/4 cup (59g).

Let's say you weigh your portion on the scale and you come up with 62 grams. Bust out that calculator and divide 62/59 and you'll get 1.05. Log that number as your serving size.

Edited to add: You can create your own label if you don't see one in the database that's correct. Lots of times there is a correct entry, you just have to find it though.

simplydelish2

Food scales are great for meat, dry pasta, etc. Many food are measured in cups, tablespoons, etc. Weights and measures are different and not interchangeable. You will find that the foods that should be measured have weight measures associated with them.

Example: 1/4 c. of one food could be 50 grams, while 1/4 c. of another food could be 30. Those types of foods are measured. Meat on the other hand is very difficult to measure by the cook - so it's measured in ounces on the food scale.

Llamapants86

I keep looking until I find an option that has grams. The database here has a ton of repeats, so keep looking.

This or I will enter my own based on the packaging.

77tes

I hate 1 serving, but if there is nutrition info on the package, it will say how many grams there are in one serving (at least in the US). If the database entry is the problem, choose a different one. Or weigh the whole thing (loaf of bakery bread) and divide....

MityMax96

I keep looking until I find an option that has grams. The database here has a ton of repeats, so keep looking.

This or I will enter my own based on the packaging.

Same here

CeleryStalker

Since you seem to be talking about mostly food with labels, use the MFP app on your phone, snap a pic of the barcode on the label, and presto, you've got all the data from the nutrition label loaded right up, including serving size. If the serving size is, say, 2 oz and you weighed out 1oz, you'd just denote that when you log, that you had .5 of one serving. I do it all the time, and trust me when I say, after a short while of religiously logging everything that goes in your mouth, it gets quite effortless!

Sunitagt

Can you take a second look at the food label? It will usually say something like Serving Size: 1/4 cup (59g).

Let's say you weigh your portion on the scale and you come up with 62 grams. Bust out that calculator and divide 62/59 and you'll get 1.05. Log that number as your serving size.

Edited to add: You can create your own label if you don't see one in the database that's correct. Lots of times there is a correct entry, you just have to find it though.

This. Or create/correct the food to have the serving size be in grams, and then record by grams. I usually just create a new one in grams so I don't have to think about it.

rrlwelter

I keep looking until I find an option that has grams. The database here has a ton of repeats, so keep looking.

This or I will enter my own based on the packaging.

Yup, I'm here doing the same thing too.

elyelyse

Since you seem to be talking about mostly food with labels, use the MFP app on your phone, snap a pic of the barcode on the label, and presto, you've got all the data from the nutrition label loaded right up, including serving size.

Unfortunately, those results tend to be as unreliable and inconsistent as any other random choice from the database. Sometimes it's by servings, sometimes by cup/tbsp, sometimes by weight, and sometimes it's totally the wrong calorie counts and completely useless. I've actually stopped using the barcode option, bc it's usually not a great entry, and I end up doing a manual search anyway.

besaro

wow, whenever i scan the barcode MFP matches precisely with the barcode on the packaging, while searching i sometimes have to search through a few entries to find the correct one, but this really doesnt seem too tedious.

aside from that, i weigh everything in grams, although my scale can switch between oz and grams.

eta: i should say, when i search manually i occasionally need to view a few entries

ashleymmannisto

I keep looking until I find an option that has grams. The database here has a ton of repeats, so keep looking.

This or I will enter my own based on the packaging.

Same here

Yup. This ^^

Heatherybit

While scrolling my heart leaps for joy when I see 1g option!

Francl27

I honestly know by heart how many grams is one serving of so many things by now... it's a bit ridiculous, lol. But I'm too lazy to edit all the entries or make my own.

Mr_Knight

I got a food scale, went to record my food and for the first several items there is no option to record in ounces in the food database.

The database is in dire need of cleaning up. It's littered with incomplete and inaccurate entries.

andielyn

Thanks for all the answers but this is not what I wanted to hear! I have to shake my head and laugh...I've read through some of the past threads about weighing food and there it seems that the is a vocal majority who INSISTS a food scale is the only way to go. I am on the fence and believe one can do this without a scale and have been tracking without one, but got a good deal on one and thought it would be another good tool for my toolbox.

THEN I realize what a pain in the butt it is to track actual weights! It would be extremely convenient if all the entries gave the option of adding food by the oz/gram. Yeah, I can crack out my calculator and do the math that 3.8 oz of bread is x of 2 oz serving slice, but I rounded it to 2. I love the barcode feature and use it a lot for prepackaged foods. I wanted the scale more for meats, fruits, veggies, or things I won't eat in a pre-portioned serving.

Live and learn.

ShannonMpls

I wanted the scale more for meats, fruits, veggies, or things I won't eat in a pre-portioned serving.

So then use it for that. I have absolutely no problem finding gram measurements for for 99% of what I eat.

smn76237

Thanks for all the answers but this is not what I wanted to hear! I have to shake my head and laugh...I've read through some of the past threads about weighing food and there it seems that the is a vocal majority who INSISTS a food scale is the only way to go. I am on the fence and believe one can do this without a scale and have been tracking without one, but got a good deal on one and thought it would be another good tool for my toolbox.

THEN I realize what a pain in the butt it is to track actual weights! It would be extremely convenient if all the entries gave the option of adding food by the oz/gram. Yeah, I can crack out my calculator and do the math that 3.8 oz of bread is x of 2 oz serving slice, but I rounded it to 2. I love the barcode feature and use it a lot for prepackaged foods. I wanted the scale more for meats, fruits, veggies, or things I won't eat in a pre-portioned serving.

Live and learn.

If you're using the app, the very first entry is typically the official entry (you just cannot see that there is not an asterisk on the app), and if you click on it and expand the options for serving size, you will see you have numerous options, including "100 g"

For example, a search for "banana raw" will result in "Generic-Bananas-Raw" as your first search result. What you will see in the app is "1.0 cup, mashed, 200 cal," but when you select it, click on "Serving Size" and you will see there are NUMEROUS other serving sizes, including 100.0 g at the very bottom.

Other tips for finding things by weight are to include "usda" "raw" "g" or "100 g" in your searches. Yes, it is a bit of a pain, but it is very much worth the effort.

andielyn

If you're using the app, the very first entry is typically the official entry (you just cannot see that there is not an asterisk on the app), and if you click on it and expand the options for serving size, you will see you have numerous options, including "100 g"

For example, a search for "banana raw" will result in "Generic-Bananas-Raw" as your first search result. What you will see in the app is "1.0 cup, mashed, 200 cal," but when you select it, click on "Serving Size" and you will see there are NUMEROUS other serving sizes, including 100.0 g at the very bottom.

Other tips for finding things by weight are to include "usda" "raw" "g" or "100 g" in your searches. Yes, it is a bit of a pain, but it is very much worth the effort.

That is a helpful tip. What I'm not seeing is numerous other serving sizes when opening the serving size but I will try those search terms to see if this helps. Thanks!

eddiesmith1

Thanks for all the answers but this is not what I wanted to hear! I have to shake my head and laugh...I've read through some of the past threads about weighing food and there it seems that the is a vocal majority who INSISTS a food scale is the only way to go. I am on the fence and believe one can do this without a scale and have been tracking without one, but got a good deal on one and thought it would be another good tool for my toolbox.

THEN I realize what a pain in the butt it is to track actual weights! It would be extremely convenient if all the entries gave the option of adding food by the oz/gram. Yeah, I can crack out my calculator and do the math that 3.8 oz of bread is x of 2 oz serving slice, but I rounded it to 2. I love the barcode feature and use it a lot for prepackaged foods. I wanted the scale more for meats, fruits, veggies, or things I won't eat in a pre-portioned serving.

Live and learn.

I agree the scale can be a PITA, but I use it consistently at home, at work I do a couple of things. Since I am the purchaser I know most times what it is the chef has put out and the portion sizes so i work from that. for the salads at this point i'm pretty good at eyeballing 100 gr of various lettuces and the other ingredients (and to be honest a 10% error on salad will not be a big deal to me) for the dressings since i use a 2 TBSP ladle I bought for the kitchen i just look up the dressing i used
Generally though i weigh/measure pretty much everything and if I can't I estimate to the high side

smn76237

If you're using the app, the very first entry is typically the official entry (you just cannot see that there is not an asterisk on the app), and if you click on it and expand the options for serving size, you will see you have numerous options, including "100 g"

For example, a search for "banana raw" will result in "Generic-Bananas-Raw" as your first search result. What you will see in the app is "1.0 cup, mashed, 200 cal," but when you select it, click on "Serving Size" and you will see there are NUMEROUS other serving sizes, including 100.0 g at the very bottom.

Other tips for finding things by weight are to include "usda" "raw" "g" or "100 g" in your searches. Yes, it is a bit of a pain, but it is very much worth the effort.

That is a helpful tip. What I'm not seeing is numerous other serving sizes when opening the serving size but I will try those search terms to see if this helps. Thanks!

Yes, not everything will have an official entry like that, but your fruits and vegetables typically do (especially if you include "raw" in your search, ie, bananas raw, celery raw, avocado raw etc).

leggup

THEN I realize what a pain in the butt it is to track actual weights! It would be extremely convenient if all the entries gave the option of adding food by the oz/gram. Yeah, I can crack out my calculator and do the math that 3.8 oz of bread is x of 2 oz serving slice, but I rounded it to 2. I love the barcode feature and use it a lot for prepackaged foods. I wanted the scale more for meats, fruits, veggies, or things I won't eat in a pre-portioned serving.

Eh I use the app on my phone and just use the calculator in my phone too. I've also gotten better at mental math. It seems like everything I eat has a serving size of 28 grams.

andielyn

I agree the scale can be a PITA, but I use it consistently at home, at work I do a couple of things. Since I am the purchaser I know most times what it is the chef has put out and the portion sizes so i work from that. for the salads at this point i'm pretty good at eyeballing 100 gr of various lettuces and the other ingredients (and to be honest a 10% error on salad will not be a big deal to me) for the dressings since i use a 2 TBSP ladle I bought for the kitchen i just look up the dressing i used
Generally though i weigh/measure pretty much everything and if I can't I estimate to the high side

I just think it's funny that I got lambasted by scale freaks for saying pretty much the same thing awhile back on a food scales post. Tons of replies saying how easy it is to use a food scale, tare it and be done with it, why would anyone use measuring cups or spoons and dirty up utensils yada, yada, yada, but no one once mentioned how big of a pain in the *kitten* it is to TRACK it on this site once you measure it! Crack out a calculator? Please. Yeah I love math and I'm good at it but really? Search through multitudes of entries to find one that measures in grams? Create new duplicate entries for nearly everything? And then, oh just eyeball it. Which of course, MAKES SENSE!!

Btw, a great trick for salad dressings, etc. is disposable medicine cups. Bought a slew on Amazon for cheap while ago...use them for everything. (Oh but wait, should I put that little cup on my scale, tare it, and then hunt down a entry that allows me to record in grams, otherwise my calorie counts will be WAAAYY off!)

Sarcasm aside, I am soooo disappointed to find that MFP has not incorporated this as a standard in every entry.

elyelyse

I just think it's funny that I got lambasted by scale freaks for saying pretty much the same thing awhile back on a food scales post. Tons of replies saying how easy it is to use a food scale, tare it and be done with it, why would anyone use measuring cups or spoons and dirty up utensils yada, yada, yada, but no one once mentioned how big of a pain in the *kitten* it is to TRACK it on this site once you measure it!!
...
Sarcasm aside, I am soooo disappointed to find that MFP has not incorporated this as a standard in every entry.

The further you are from your goal weight, the easier it is to get away with not using a scale, because there's a larger margin of error. If your deficit is only 800 instead of 1000 one day, you're still at a good deficit. However, for those close to goal weight, who are working with say a 250 calorie a day deficit, well, eating an extra 15g of peanut butter is going to cut their deficit by almost half. Have you ever weighed 2 tbsp of peanut butter? It's very very little, much less than people think 2 tbsp is. Most people who don't weigh their food and then get a scale start to realize they've been eating about double the serving size for it. So, just that amount of mistake each day will slow that persons loss by almost half....that's significant. Some Other foods that I've found tend to weigh a lot more than people think: granola and breakfast cereals, cheese, condiments, apples and bananas, starchy vegetables. No, lol, you don't need to weigh lettuce and cucumbers, but if you add sunflower seeds or slivered almonds as a salad topper, that you might wanna weight.

For people who are seeing a nice rate of loss, nah scales aren't a necessity...but as soon as someone says "I'm not losing" or "why am I losing so slow" yes, the first question is "are you weighing your food" because that's the record, and a more accurate record will provide better answers.

For the most part, once you've been doing it for a while it gets easier. I eat a lot of the same veggies, meats, and snacks pretty regularly so they are either on my recent or frequent pages, or I've eaten the thing so many times that I know how many grams are supposed to be in the "1 serving". I rarely use a calculator because I can estimate and round up easy enough to compensate for errors.

As for the disappointment...that's is what happens when information is crowdsourced. And because not everyone feels the need for weight based servings, we get all kinds of things. It could be left to just staff to propagate the database but...then the consequences would be that you wouldn't be able to locate or create an entry for that obscure brand from some little local place.

eddiesmith1

I just think it's funny that I got lambasted by scale freaks for saying pretty much the same thing awhile back on a food scales post. Tons of replies saying how easy it is to use a food scale, tare it and be done with it, why would anyone use measuring cups or spoons and dirty up utensils yada, yada, yada, but no one once mentioned how big of a pain in the *kitten* it is to TRACK it on this site once you measure it!!
...
Sarcasm aside, I am soooo disappointed to find that MFP has not incorporated this as a standard in every entry.

The further you are from your goal weight, the easier it is to get away with not using a scale, because there's a larger margin of error. If your deficit is only 800 instead of 1000 one day, you're still at a good deficit. However, for those close to goal weight, who are working with say a 250 calorie a day deficit, well, eating an extra 15g of peanut butter is going to cut their deficit by almost half. Have you ever weighed 2 tbsp of peanut butter? It's very very little, much less than people think 2 tbsp is. Most people who don't weigh their food and then get a scale start to realize they've been eating about double the serving size for it. So, just that amount of mistake each day will slow that persons loss by almost half....that's significant. Some Other foods that I've found tend to weigh a lot more than people think: granola and breakfast cereals, cheese, condiments, apples and bananas, starchy vegetables. No, lol, you don't need to weigh lettuce and cucumbers, but if you add sunflower seeds or slivered almonds as a salad topper, that you might wanna weight.

For people who are seeing a nice rate of loss, nah scales aren't a necessity...but as soon as someone says "I'm not losing" or "why am I losing so slow" yes, the first question is "are you weighing your food" because that's the record, and a more accurate record will provide better answers.

For the most part, once you've been doing it for a while it gets easier. I eat a lot of the same veggies, meats, and snacks pretty regularly so they are either on my recent or frequent pages, or I've eaten the thing so many times that I know how many grams are supposed to be in the "1 serving". I rarely use a calculator because I can estimate and round up easy enough to compensate for errors.

As for the disappointment...that's is what happens when information is crowdsourced. And because not everyone feels the need for weight based servings, we get all kinds of things. It could be left to just staff to propagate the database but...then the consequences would be that you wouldn't be able to locate or create an entry for that obscure brand from some little local place.

I had neglected to mention Calorie dense foods like Nut Butters I just avoid altogether when i can't weigh them. they are deceptive. I get away with not using a scale at work in part because Portioning adn portion measurement is part of the job and the chefs control the portions on nutrient dense items (like proteins/lasagna etc) quite well because it's a part of the costing process. So when i take a piece of lasagna from the pan i know it's withing 5-7% of the proper weight 95 times out of 100 and I have the nutrient info on everything we use

andielyn

I got the scale primarily for calorie dense foods like nut butters, nuts, etc., unsliced bakery breads, meats, fruits, etc. I found a good post yesterday by happenstance on accurately logging your food, with suggestions on how to edit existing entries and create your own and add to "my foods", as well as other excellent tips. I'm more than willing to front-load work to make it easy in the long run. I'm sure this contributes to the problem of all the multiple entries--even an option to NOT add it to the database would be a great feature. I'm pretty sure Livestrong and Sparkpeople have the serving size option available in all their database entries.

dunnodunno

Can you take a second look at the food label? It will usually say something like Serving Size: 1/4 cup (59g).

Let's say you weigh your portion on the scale and you come up with 62 grams. Bust out that calculator and divide 62/59 and you'll get 1.05. Log that number as your serving size.

Edited to add: You can create your own label if you don't see one in the database that's correct. Lots of times there is a correct entry, you just have to find it though.

Great advice!