What the!!! How much?!

sashaverlene

Hey! I was just going through the nutritional facts of a few items I got at the milk bar today. For salad, it said one serving is 3 oz. Why are most things measured that way and how are you supposed to know how much it is if you don't have a food scale? The deck of cards thing isn't working for everything. How do YOU guys measure salad and other things that are measured in ounces or something that you can't use a measuring cup or spoon on? lol Thanks!

- Sasha xoxo

poisongirl6485

I know my bag of Dole Spring mix says a serving is 3 oz, but next to that it says that it's about 1/2 the bag. Honestly, lettuce/salad mixes by themselves have very small amounts of calories (3 oz of spring mix is like 20 calories).

ColemanM

I just got a food scale for Christmas, you can pick one up for cheap (20 bucks or so, maybe even less). It is well worth it, I have a ton of fun figuring out calories in things and it really helps me see what a real serving of meat is and all that. Totally worth it if you can find one, local thrift stores may even get them in too! Do you best, estimates are better than nothing!

fitoverfifty

I know! It can be confusing!

They also have grams...which I don' work with either.

Usually there are several different things on the list to choose from. For the salad I go with the " 1 bowl" option.

For other items I have to look around and find which one is the closest to what I ate.

When it says " 1 cup" you can change the nr. in front of it to .5 if you had half a cup or .25 if it was a forth of a cup.

Hope this helps a little.

I also bought a small scale to weigh some things....like chicken and other meat. They don't cost much.

fouchou09

I would like to see how people respond to this. I don't know either. I honestly don't know what an ounce of cheese looks like. Guess I should invest in a scale. I'm sure I will be shocked and saddened when I find out what an ounce of cheese really looks like.

ratmamaof2

I use this site http://www.cuisinecuisine.com/FoodConversions.htm for a lot of conversions and then just measure them out. Hope it helps.

DrBorkBork

Your fist is about 4 oz of dense food (like steak & ice cream).

stephgabriele

Usually when I don't have a scale nearby I look at the servings per container/whatever and split them by eye and package them seperately. If it's salad I take zip locks and just portion it out to how ever many portions it says there are in the bag. It's hard sometime to really eye certain food but it's always better to get it out of the way right when you open it first, that way you don't have to guess each and every time

Amylynn

3oz would be a ton of salad. I have a scale & I suggest you get one cuz it helps alot with accuracy. For example: There are these potato wedges I love called texas crispers & a serving is 3 oz or appx 8 fries. I used to just do 8 fries until I got a scale. I realized that 3oz of fries was more than 8 so I had been shorting myself. Things like lunchmeat really need to be measured too, because again, a 3oz serving of lunch meat is quit a bit more than you would think.

I actually bought some good measuring spoons too because w/some items (ketchup, coffee creamer, salt) I was over-doing it by eating way more than a single serving when I was just trying to measure by eye-balling it. I literally measure everything I eat now except on my cheat day.

bloodbank

I'm going to look like an obsessive creepo, but you can absolutely get pocket-sized scales. ;D

stephgabriele

I'm going to look like an obsessive creepo, but you can absolutely get pocket-sized scales. ;D

Hahaha, amazing! I'm sure some people might use them for other things if you catch my drift. I'd probably write food scale on it, lol

snockers3112

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_grams_are_in_a_cup

I work in grams and have no idea what a cup of something is....do you really use a cup to measure things? What if your cup is larger than someone elses? It really is confusing. When you use a scale to measure grams out you soon learn approx how much of something weighs a gram. I bought a cook book online the other day and it must be an American book as everything is measured in cups. Some of the receipes look lovely and once I've got round the whole 'cup' idea I'm sure I will try some of them out

bloodbank

I'm going to look like an obsessive creepo, but you can absolutely get pocket-sized scales. ;D

Hahaha, amazing! I'm sure some people might use them for other things if you catch my drift. I'd probably write food scale on it, lol

Oh, I'm sure I'm probably in the tiiiiiiiiny minority that doesn't use that kind as a drug scale.

iplayoutside19

We use a postage scale as our food scale. We picked it up for $15. It does grams, ounces & pounds. Harbor Freight has one on sale this week for $12.

http://www.harborfreight.com/1000-gram-digital-scale-97920.html

I think a Food Scale is more important than an HRM in terms of measuring your calorie intake. We've discovered a significant discrepency between the weight of a food, and a "cup" of food. There was a thread around here last week discussing this.

While I don't take a food scale with me. We spend some time over the weekend measuring, and portioning out servings for later in the week. We also measure left-overs and write the weight on it.

sarahlasvegas

I HAVE to have a scale - i work in grams and they say reg serving is 75 grams dried pasta.

I kid you not - i must have been having about 200g plus before..... wonder how i got fat....

I cant manage on 75g though and have 100g...babysteps and all that....

sarahlasvegas

Im so going to get those pocket scales - just found some online for £15.

I struggle when getting lunch at work - e.g a baked potato and having no idea what size this is.... dont care if i look weird at work lol

lisawest

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_grams_are_in_a_cup

I work in grams and have no idea what a cup of something is....do you really use a cup to measure things? What if your cup is larger than someone elses? It really is confusing. When you use a scale to measure grams out you soon learn approx how much of something weighs a gram. I bought a cook book online the other day and it must be an American book as everything is measured in cups. Some of the receipes look lovely and once I've got round the whole 'cup' idea I'm sure I will try some of them out

:happy: Sometimes I wonder if "they" didn't make some of this stuff up just to confuse us! But here's a quick run down: a cup is 8 oz, 2 cups is a pint, 2 pints is a quart, 4 quarts is a gallon. When you're talking liquid measurements. Solid measurements get even more confusing

Here are a couple places to look for quick conversions:
http://allrecipes.com//HowTo/cup-to-gram-conversions/Detail.aspx
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/gram-conversions.aspx

sashaverlene

Whaaat? I really need to buy a food scale now. lol

lisawest

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_grams_are_in_a_cup

I work in grams and have no idea what a cup of something is....do you really use a cup to measure things? What if your cup is larger than someone elses? It really is confusing. When you use a scale to measure grams out you soon learn approx how much of something weighs a gram. I bought a cook book online the other day and it must be an American book as everything is measured in cups. Some of the receipes look lovely and once I've got round the whole 'cup' idea I'm sure I will try some of them out

:happy: Sometimes I wonder if "they" didn't make some of this stuff up just to confuse us! But here's a quick run down: a cup is 8 oz, 2 cups is a pint, 2 pints is a quart, 4 quarts is a gallon. When you're talking liquid measurements. Solid measurements get even more confusing

Here are a couple places to look for quick conversions:
http://allrecipes.com//HowTo/cup-to-gram-conversions/Detail.aspx
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/gram-conversions.aspx

I really should have pointed out that those were AMERICAN ounces. Which are different from Brittish ounces!

garedds

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_grams_are_in_a_cup

I work in grams and have no idea what a cup of something is....do you really use a cup to measure things? What if your cup is larger than someone elses? It really is confusing. When you use a scale to measure grams out you soon learn approx how much of something weighs a gram. I bought a cook book online the other day and it must be an American book as everything is measured in cups. Some of the receipes look lovely and once I've got round the whole 'cup' idea I'm sure I will try some of them out

:happy: Sometimes I wonder if "they" didn't make some of this stuff up just to confuse us! But here's a quick run down: a cup is 8 oz, 2 cups is a pint, 2 pints is a quart, 4 quarts is a gallon. When you're talking liquid measurements. Solid measurements get even more confusing

Here are a couple places to look for quick conversions:
http://allrecipes.com//HowTo/cup-to-gram-conversions/Detail.aspx
http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/gram-conversions.aspx

I really should have pointed out that those were AMERICAN ounces. Which are different from Brittish ounces!

To further convert
1 cup is 250 ml
1/2 cup is 125 ml
1/4 cup is 60 ml
4 cups is 1 L
1tsp is 5 ml
1 Tablespoon is 15 ml

Hope this helps!

rosebarnalice

I bought an inexpensive kitchen scale, and LOVE it! And I've found that by using it regularly, I've gotten better at judging portions both at home and when eating out. I've used it to test my accuracy with the "deck of cards" and "fist" methods, and I'm getting much better!

BigBoneSista

I purchase a scale from Target. I'm not into guessing.

taletreader

:happy: Sometimes I wonder if "they" didn't make some of this stuff up just to confuse us! But here's a quick run down: a cup is 8 oz, 2 cups is a pint, 2 pints is a quart, 4 quarts is a gallon. When you're talking liquid measurements. Solid measurements get even more confusing

I really should have pointed out that those were AMERICAN ounces. Which are different from Brittish ounces!

Which is exactly why it's not only a little bit annoying, but deeply infuriating for me to deal with a crappy unit system like this one. I've been using g and ml since I can read numbers (and for water, 1 ml weighs close enough to 1 g, so conversion for most liquids is really easy) and really don't see any good reason to prefer something as complicated and messy as your system. Probably it helps teaching kids arithmetic, but that's the only use I can see.

shish61

I always found the cup thing confusing until I went to the States and then all became clear. These are standard measures - just like the tablespoon measures we have. You can buy cup measures in the UK. Hope this helps.

eresin

Yeh I'm in Scotland and the cup thing is a mystery to me. I have Rosemary Conley Portion Pots which I use, but generally you can find me standing in my kitchen with a calculator reading the grams. my b/f thinks i'm nuts!