So How Exactly Should You Weigh That?

Mirabilis

I recently bought some Northern Gold Steel Cut Oats from Costco. They're truly sublime, but if you look at the packaging there's a little snag. The nutritional info sets out dry measure by weight to figure out calories, but when you look at the cooking information, it's done by volume, using milliliters (mL)! Kind of dumb.

It does highlight a little problem though: even though my food scale will do mL as well as grams, pounds and ounces, the mL for weight and the mL for volume are not the same thing. The 40g by weight of steel cut oats is equivalent to 60mL by volume and we know that once you add water, it's a different number again, so hard to measure out except if you essentially make one portion servings or (if you need more) you divide them proportionately.

I know how to deal with this now that I've identified the issue, but I thought I'd just let you all know about it. It was a revelation for me (god my life is so dull )

flyawaybyebye

I HATE that. I wish everyone would settle on just ONE way to describe calories per unit of food - preferably calories per 100 grams, because that's the easiest and most universal measurement. It drives me totally bonkers when they make it confusing. Glad you were able to figure it out, but you shouldn't have had to work so hard for something it should be your right to know as a consumer!

MarieNevada

the oatmeal i use doubles in volume when cooking. so 1/2 cup dry becomes 1 cup cooked. Also ml is never a weight measurement but always a volume measurement. so i'm not sure exactly what your scale is "weighing" when it gives a ml weight measurement.. one ml of water weights 1 gram, 1 litre of water weighs 1 lb so maybe it's going off that.

anyway, when it gives you ml for cooking instructions, it's volume. 1 cup is equal to 250 ml, if that helps. so measure out the volume you want to cook, ie 1/2 cup and weigh that for future reference.

nerdieprofessor

So measure out the mL (volume!) that you want to cook. Then, weigh that (grams) and do the calorie calculations with the weight.

mL is a volume measure not a weight measure, of course. Once you've figured the dry weight of something and calculated its calories. Then cook that amount and weight it after and record that for future reference.

MarieNevada

I HATE that. I wish everyone would settle on just ONE way to describe calories per unit of food - preferably calories per 100 grams, because that's the easiest and most universal measurement. It drives me totally bonkers when they make it confusing. Glad you were able to figure it out, but you shouldn't have had to work so hard for something it should be your right to know as a consumer!

my absolute favourite measurement on a box (big sarcasm alert) is when it gives the calorie count for 1/8th of a box. seriously? how many calories are you trying to hide by making it so difficult for me to figure out what one serving according to you is? Because that's all it is with the non-standard serving sizes. they're trying to hide how many calories you're likely to eat by making serving sizes so ridiculously small no one eats just one serving. Because lets face it, who besides us MFP's even looks at serving sizes?

Mirabilis

I'd like it ALL to be by weight. One universal small unit of measure, like grams. Ounces are just too big and they're also a unit of weight (dry) and volume (liquid).

melaniecheeks

1 litre of water is 1 kg, for info.