I found this thing while cleaning, what do you think??

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  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
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    As others have said: check it against a known weight, get it calibrated and use it. That's fabulous!
  • ChrisManch
    ChrisManch Posts: 46 Member
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    Its funny because you all believe that a packet of butter marked "500g" weighs 500g and a tin marked 400g weighs 400g but you want to use digital scales so you can weigh to 1g accuracy.


    In Europe the weight marked on packaging is the AVERAGE weight. I don't know about the USA, maybe its the MINIMUM weight (as it used to be here) or the average.

    The calorie and nutrient values of food, is also an average figure. The energy content per 100g of a potato for example will vary with its variety, how old it was when harvested, how long and where it was stored and several other factors, but you are quite happy to take the MyFitnessPal value as gospel.

    The calorific value of food is worked out by drying out a sample of the food, and then burning it and seeing how much the heat produced raises the temperature of some water. Your digestion doesn't work like that, not all the calories in food are extracted. Different people will get different amounts out of the same food because their digestion efficiency is different.

    Also people talk about having a deficit of a certain number of calories based on the activity/exercise and food intake and give precise numbers, but in reality its all an estimate. The amount of calories you burn in a day will vary by many factors, not only how much you move, but also what you are wearing, how hot or cold it ism your own personal metabolism, your mood etc. etc.

    Its all just estimates and averages and having precise scales isn't going to make it all suddenly true and accurate.
  • AglaeaC
    AglaeaC Posts: 1,974 Member
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    Its all just estimates and averages and having precise scales isn't going to make it all suddenly true and accurate.
    While your whole post is true in a sense, I'd still add the linear versus logarithmic stuff to it, too. If a scale is slightly off, I'm somewhat okay with that, but if it goes off in a logarithmic tangent when mass increases, I'd kiss it goodbye yesterday.

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