How to figure amounts of food used..

If 8 oz is 227 grams then 2 Tbs of that item would be 1/8 Cup = 1 oz = 28 grams.

Solids are measured by weight, liquids by volume. Semi-solids are confusing (and I don't eat yogurt) but if you are trying to log 2 Tbs on a 1 Cup / 8 oz portion size, 2 Tbs would be be .125 serving.

Hope this helps and that I'm understanding your question correctly.

So glad I could help. :happy: My two best investments have been a food scale ($25) and cutting board that has printed conversion charts (that was a xmas gift).

I just google it, I find the food with the same type of measurements I used (cups, tablespoons, or oz) but if there isn't one I just convert it, say I know I have 4 oz and there are only grams, I google how many grams in 4 oz, and it comes up at the top of the screen, it's 113.something so if there was a 100g serving option, I usually just change it to the 1 gram option (cause usually there is one) and do 113 servings

if you can get a food scale that's better than using cups and stuff because it's more accurate, but I go to college and can't just bring around a food scale with me, so I estimate conservatively

for things where you know you had like 5 crackers, if there is no like per cracker or per 10 cracker option, look at the box, it'll say like 18 oz weight, look at how many crackers in a serving, 5 crackers, and how many servings in the package lets say 5 servings, so that's 5x5= 25 crackers divided by a total weight of 18 oz you get approx. 1.4 oz per cracker, so then you can times that by 4 and use that or convert that to oz. it can be annoying sometimes, so always look at all the optons to see if there are other serving size options

Firefox7275 wrote:
Be careful converting volume to weight, it's fraught with inaccuracies. 1g of water is 1ml but that does not hold true for other liquids, and solids can be loose or tightly packed and have different densities to boot. Weigh your food wherever possible.

You can use a digital scale to estimate volume. The error depends on how far the density varies from water.

Common edible liquids (e.g. milk, cream, soda) have densities within 5% of water.
For ice cream, the error is within 10%.
Yogurt is somewhere between the two.
For honey and syrup, the error extends to 40% but you'd probably don't care about the volume of honey.

Just read the value in grams and call it ml. It's a handy trick if you know what you're doing and can accept the error. Some manufacturers claim their scales measure volume e.g. Saltar calls it 'aquatronic'. They're just charging you for a button that swaps a 'g' for an 'ml'.

I use google. It has a pretty good conversion table.

So glad I could help. :happy: My two best investments have been a food scale ($25) and cutting board that has printed conversion charts (that was a xmas gift).

where might one get her own cutting board with printed conversion charts, becuase this seems like a thing I need to own...?

Thanks!

I'll second this! I've got a food scale, but would love one of those cutting boards too! :happy:

well, since a cup is 250 ml, and a tbs is 15 ml
.....................................

i'll let you figure out the rest.

but as was said in this thread, getting a cheap kitchen scale is definitely your best option in almost all cases.

Firefox7275 wrote:

I fail to see what is handy about a 10-40% error or what is convenient about using a scale to estimate something.

Nothing in my post said 10-40% error is acceptable. I started by saying common edible liquids (e.g. milk, cream, soda) have densities within 5% of water.

The choices for dieters are:
* no measurement device and log a non-specific amount e.g. 'serving' or a 'portion'
* no measurement device and log a specific amount e.g. 100 ml
* measuring cup
* measuring jug
* pouring out of a mass produced premeasured pack which may leave some stuck to the pack.
* use digital food scale
I think it will be difficult for 95% of users in a domestic setting to get much better than 5% error using any of those methods.

But my post was not to recommend the method. I rarely do it but the issue was raised and I thought people might be interested to know what scale manufacturers are doing and why. I was careful to say it's a trick if you know what you're doing and it's acceptable to you.

A professional caterer showed me her scale and told me it measured volume. I asked her how she thought it worked and she admitted it hadn't occurred to her to think about it - she just used it. Once I told her how it worked, she realised it wasn't worth paying extra for but she would continue to use it for weighing milk to estimate the volume. Part of my motivation for posting was to tell people what the manufacturers are doing and warn them to beware of paying extra for something you can do with any scale. Using science isn't bad - it's another thing you can do with a digital food scale if you know the science behind it.

If you want to know which manufacturers do this, look them up, or ask me and I can look it up and post a few examples.

My best purchase - a set of digital scales which you can re set back to zero. i.e. lunch - put bowl on scales, set to zero, weight out chicken breast, set to zero, weight out cottage cheese, set to zero, weight out avacado. Job done and all weighed correctly, only the bowl I eat from to wash. I just love my scales.