confused on measuring food on kitchen scale

lilmisslanna

So I have Trader Joes BBQ Chicken Teriyaki.. it says 1 cup is 150 calories... ok.. so it's frozen how do I measure it? I put it on my scale to 8oz.. but that seemed like a whole lot...

im confused.. how do you measure something like this at home, when you are dividing out portions??


Oh and I didn't use the sauce ...

cmriverside

Divide the ounces you use by the ounces in the description.

Also, there is a drop-down menu on the food portion sizes in the box that appears when you search....




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edit, I see it is only entered in Cups in the database. You can edit that and make it ounces for your use. I use grams for everything, so I have to re-enter a lot of stuff.

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cmriverside

For instance, 2oz is .25 cup.

This is a sauce, right?

Here is a conversion website :

http://www.metric-conversions.org/cgi-bin/util/convert.cgi

KadieA

I have a question for you: How do you find weighing your portions? Is it beneficial? And inconvenience?

lilmisslanna

I normally measure out liquids and tablespoons for stuff like milk, salad dressing, peanut butter etc. and I find it very helpful. The scale is taking some gettting used to and sometimes I wonder if Im doing it right .. like today for instance.. lol

dbcja

I have been prepareing as much of my food as I can seperately from my families just until I get an idea of how much an amount looks like (what does 150g of fish look like? etc) It is a bit of a pain, but I think it will work. Well, I hope it will.

cmriverside

You say you didn't use the sauce...(?) so I'd use just a "Chicken" entry then: assuming you had just chicken.
Like "Chicken breast, frozen" or some such description.

You have to get a little creative/

lruff1987

I would cook it before I weighed it. It's more accurate after being cooked.

crissi66

I find it beneficial. I have serious portion control issues. i could eat a whole chicken if its infront of me. I got the biggest loser scale at Bed bath and beyond, its small and digital and works really well. its a real learning experience to see what 5 or 6 oz of chicken really is.

cmriverside

Doesn't the food description on the package list the ounces or grams? You go by the package, not the entry in Myfitnesspal.

peggybrant

I find it beneficial. I have serious portion control issues. i could eat a whole chicken if its infront of me. I got the biggest loser scale at Bed bath and beyond, its small and digital and works really well. its a real learning experience to see what 5 or 6 oz of chicken really is.

Agreed and how sad is it that our meat portion is so tiny, tiny tiny. It makes you realize how large of portions we were eating as if our weight wasn't telling us already

chuckyp

And remember that ounces and fluid ounces are not the same thing. Ounces are weight and fluid ounces are volume. A cup is 8 fluid ounces. If you are trying to measure a portion by weight, but trying to measure it out using how much of a measuring cup it occupies, you're not going to be accurate. For example, you can have a cup of confetti and a cup of lead pellets. You have 8 fluid ounces of each by volume, but you might have 2 ounces of confetti and 200 ounces of lead pellets by weight.

With liquid items, fluid ounces are implied and the container may not actually say "fluid oz." or "fl. oz.". (i.e a 12 oz can of Coke)
With solid items, ounces given are by weight (i.e. a 6 oz sirloin)

tlp8rb

I have a Salter nutritional scale and I love it. This is my second one. The first one simply wore out after years and years of use.

So many things we eat are subjective. What is a "medium" potato to me might be a "small" potato to you. I put my potato on my scale, find "potato" in my code book, punch in the code for potato and then hit the calorie button, and voila - it gives me the exact number of calories in that potato. It also reads other nutrition information such as fat, fiber, protein, salt, cholesterol and carbs.

The book has codes for hundreds of common foods broken into categories such as grains, poultry, fruit, meat, vegetables, etc.

I put my bowl on the scale, hit the "zero" button, change the reading to grams and measure out exactly the number of grams shown for one serving size on the side of a package. Much more accurate than trying to use a measuring cup. Then, I hit zero again, change the reading to ounces and pour exactly four ounces on milk on my cereal. Again, no measuring cup.

I have a hook under my kitchen cupboard that the scale is supposed to hang from but it is always in use so staying on my counter top. There is a newer, glass top scale on clearance right now at Walmart.com for $40.00.

Mrs_McFadden

What chuckyp said.
Just remember how recipes work. If you're going to make something baked and require measured flour, you are going to use measuring cups for dry measure, NOT liquid measures. If you look at whatever packaged food you are dealing with, it should announce how its measured.

wolfchild59

Unless the serving size is given to you in a weight you shouldn’t really be trying to weigh it out. If it says one cup, then use a one cup measuring cup (liquid measure for a liquid and a dry measure for a solid/dry item). If it gives you ounces or grams along with that volume measurement, then use that as a basis for your weight measure. (i.e. 1 cup of Cheerios = 32g so you could either measure out 1 cup in a dry measure or weigh out 32g and get the same amount)

And as someone said above, there’s a big difference between ounces and fluid ounces.

Imagine it this way, if a recipe called for one cup of mini marshmallows, that would be just less than 1/5 or so of a standard 10.5oz bag of mini marshmallows. But, if you weighed out 8 ounces of mini marshmallows on a scale then you would end up using about 4/5 of the same bag.

Mindful_Trent

Unless the serving size is given to you in a weight you shouldn’t really be trying to weigh it out. If it says one cup, then use a one cup measuring cup (liquid measure for a liquid and a dry measure for a solid/dry item). If it gives you ounces or grams along with that volume measurement, then use that as a basis for your weight measure. (i.e. 1 cup of Cheerios = 32g so you could either measure out 1 cup in a dry measure or weigh out 32g and get the same amount)

And as someone said above, there’s a big difference between ounces and fluid ounces.

Imagine it this way, if a recipe called for one cup of mini marshmallows, that would be just less than 1/5 or so of a standard 10.5oz bag of mini marshmallows. But, if you weighed out 8 ounces of mini marshmallows on a scale then you would end up using about 4/5 of the same bag.

^^ This. Excellent answer. Couldn't have said it better myself.

toots99

I find it beneficial. I have serious portion control issues. i could eat a whole chicken if its infront of me. I got the biggest loser scale at Bed bath and beyond, its small and digital and works really well. its a real learning experience to see what 5 or 6 oz of chicken really is.

Same here...and that's the same scale I use.

KadieA

I normally measure out liquids and tablespoons for stuff like milk, salad dressing, peanut butter etc. and I find it very helpful. The scale is taking some gettting used to and sometimes I wonder if Im doing it right .. like today for instance.. lol

I see I was looking into that and my bf used to do that with meats all the time when he was into fitness.
Good luck figuring it all out!

joerob3369

Hello I also have one of these too but I was wondering why is it that when I go to measure one cup of oatmeal it comes to only 46 calories and only 12 carbs ? The grams are 80 in weight which is 1 cup according to the cylinder of oatmeal I'm using and it definitely isn't 46 calories it should be 300 atleast am I doing something wrong