Appeal: Please use serving size as grams

Hey, folks, take another look at the request. NOBODY'S SAYING "GET RID OF CUPS"-- just "put it in grams like the civilized world uses".

I'm American, but we're the only major country in the world that still uses an antiquated measuring system. And to think we used to laugh at the English for their pre-reform currency, with 12d (pence) to the shilling and 20s to £1 (pound).

You might be American, but I'll still give you a big sloppy kiss for that :smooched:

~finds the contents of this thread a fascinating revelation, and slowly and carefully backs away from it~

No. Just, no.

I don't scale my food. Sorry, but that brings back way too many bad memories of being anal-retentive about eating to the point of just not eating. 1 pizza from a box is one freaking from a box, and 40 cals is NOT that much. I usually leave a 100-200 cals in my limit for estimation issues.

You do what you need to do, but a cup is a cup, a tsp is a tsp, and I have lost weight while not fretting about that extra 20 grams in my pizza.

Just please, please, PLEASE, do not convert this app and site to grams and mL. Make it a dual, sure, but for the rest of us who don't have the money or time to constantly measure our food to the gram, don't.

Besides, everyone knows you don't REALLY know how much went in if you don't measure what came out.

the real isnt that people arent using grams, its that they are using liquid measurements (cups) to weight dry foods. If people learned how to actually measure things with the right tools all of this would be a moot point. You dont measure weight with a mesaure tape and you dont measure electrical resistance with dial calipers. use the right tools to measure and all will be fine.

Then you have to define 'what is the correct tool' because it will be based on what the heck you're using it for.

If you want to have some sort of precise weight for the purpose of figuring out calories that's fine (with the understanding that just as someone above listed, overall weight may also not be entirely accurate if there are multiple ingredients involed. IOW, pizza may weigh 200 grams, but whether it's 100 grams of green peppers or 100 grams of cheese (or 60/40 or 70/30) will make a difference. Unless you're deconstructing your pizza to weigh each and every item on it, you're still talking margin of error).

If on the other hand you are cooking something using a U.S. cookbook, a cup may well be the correct tool because you're following instructions that were created using that method. The ingredients aren't listed in grams and someone may not want to spend a half hour doing math while cooking dinner since it's wholly unecessary for what they're doing.

Besides, it's not like there aren't other differences as well. I would guess that the majority of American's also don't enter 'eggplant' as 'aubergine' or 'red bell pepper' as 'capsicum.' We may share a common language but there are different cultures.

At any rate, there is always going to be a margin of error when trying to figure out the calorie load of what you're eating. In fact, calorie itself is a bit of a fudge since a calorie is based on measuring the amount of energy it takes to raise a kg of water by 1 degree Celsius. The way that cells metabolise energy has to do with ATP. So a calorie as it relates to metabolic processes aren't the 'best' measure. They are the most conveniently used one.

Beyond that, this being a wide world, there are going to be differences in what people default to in the way in which they choose to estimate their foods. That's life.

MFP is 'free' and allows you to enter you own measurements. If you're disatisfied with what pops up when you search for something, it's your choice whether or not to use what you find in the system or enter your own. Don't complain if someone else defaults to a different process than you. You're just as capable of entering the data to your own preference as they are to theirs.

Sweet mercy I JUST came here to ask the same. If not grams, ounces, or if not ounces, pounds. In an ideal world we can all enter our personal preference in our individual settings & it would calculate for us but I'd settle for a note in the main description so I don't have to click 5 different possibilities so see if one is entered as pounds/ounces/grams. The TBSP/TSP measurements make me especially nuts LOL. That's what got me to this post. Jif Natural Peanut butter is listed as TBSP or TSP. Then I have find a conversion website and it never equals an even number. Just something like 1.3333333333333...ARGH!

I'm not sure where you live but here in the U.S. a lot of food items are not given a gram serving size. Instead it could be in ounces, cups, etc. And I think you're being awfully anal weighing prepackaged foods.

Disagree. Everything I have encountered, in a US grocery, that has a label, has grams listed right next to the serving size. Also disagree about being "anal" (name calling? Nice!) for weighing prepackaged foods. I dont need 2 TBSP of peanut butter. That's 190 calories! I only want a smaller amount- of which I will measure. Do you always eat a full service size on a package? What if there are 5 crackers & you only want 3? How do you figure that out? Guess? Not very accurate.

I purposefully overestimate in cases such as this. For instance, there are 95 cals in 1 TBSP of pb. If there are 3 tsp in 1 tbsp, then divide 95 by 3 and you get 31.6666666667. So, one tsp of pb has approximately 32 calories (probably give or take a few).

Same with the cracker scenario. If 5 crackers have 70 calories, then divide 70/5 and you get 14 calories/cracker. Multiply 14 X 3 and you get 42 cals for 3 crackers. Then, create your own entry and save it for future use.

The TBSP/TSP measurements make me especially nuts LOL. That's what got me to this post. Jif Natural Peanut butter is listed as TBSP or TSP. Then I have find a conversion website and it never equals an even number. Just something like 1.3333333333333...ARGH!

What does it even matter?

The fraction always exists. Is it simply reassuring when the manufacturer ignores the fraction and rounds the number off for you? You can ignore the fraction and round the number too.

I mean, just pulling out the jar of Smuckers peanut butter in my cabinet, the nutrition label states it as:

Serving size: 2Tbsp (32g) = 210 cal

Now, in reality is 2Tbs exactly 32grams? There are no possible fractions? ...or did Smuckers just ignore the .333333333? I'm guessing that there's some rounding going on somewhere, either with the grams or with the tablespoon but honestly, what does it even matter? A fractional difference that small should not be crucial to someone's daily caloric intake. There has to be some wiggle room if for no other reason than to account for a human margin or error.

(And I don't understand how there can be vast variations in what constitutes a measured tbs of peanut butter. Peanut butter is a fairly dense food. If you measure it properly in a measuring spoon (meaning you fill it full then remove the excess above the top rim of the the measuring spoon), you're going to come out to relatively close to the same weight every time. There isn't a lot of room for variance and what little there is would seem to be a negligible. No one's total caloric intake should be so close to the bar that the difference between weight in a measured tbs of peanut butter this time and the weight of measured tbs of peanut butter the next time should actually matter. It should roughtly be around 32 grams... give or take a fraction.

It's also why I'm confused by all the cries of "but a tablespoon is a volume not a weight" So? They measured a tablespoon of peanut butter and weighed it. So 2 MEASURED tablespoons = 210 calories = 32 grams (give or take a fraction somewhere on side of the conversion or the other) It should still be really darn close whether you're going by the measured volume listed on the jar or by the weight listed. These listed values should be relatively close.

And if the question is whether someone is eyeballing a 'tablespoon,' the equivalent would not be to a measured weight but to someone eyeballing an approximate gram of food, in which case the margin of error comes with guessing not the unit of measure. Because there's guessing, there's a margin of error either way. A guess is a guess whether one is guessing tablespoons or grams.

I can't help but think, people have existed for thousands of years without weighing every morsel that they eat. Yes, it's important when counting calories to keep track of the amount, but the useful part of weighing or counting the volume is learning proper serving sizes of food. But anyone thinking they're going to be accurate to three decimals places is worrying themselves beyond the point of necessity.

(And if the issue is that someone else took the time and effort to enter the information based on the way that they personally use it, and the next person is bothered because that first person used a different unit of measure than their own preference. Well, you don't have to use it. You are equally as entitled as the first to expend your time and your effort to look up the information and enter it into the data base yourself.)

I dont need 2 TBSP of peanut butter. That's 190 calories! I only want a smaller amount- of which I will measure. Do you always eat a full service size on a package? What if there are 5 crackers & you only want 3? How do you figure that out?

Dare I say... math?

Dare I say... math?

The point of services like MFP is to minimize math. The software is supposed to take care of the nitty gritty.

Put me in the grams/ounces camp.

I agree!!!! I mean, when I see 1 cup or half a cup, it drives me crazy! I don't know how big your cup is!
Thank you for bringing this up!

uh....a cup is a unit of measure. one cup = one cup.

exactly. a cup is a unit of measurement, not just a thing you drink out of. If someone is using "one cup" to measure, they mean 250 ml, or, in other words, one cup.

As stated by another poster, I use this site because it's supposed to have the best Database. The best Database (IMO) doesn't require math, I prefer art and English.

& If I choose to count every single calorie, thats my choice because it has worked for me. Estimating, in my very personal experience, is a very slippery slope for me.

I was not aware of the ability to make entries "public". I will look into this option as it may solve my problem & I dont give a crap if someone else chooses to use cups or any other random measurement: if it works for them.

The biggest mistake we can all make, is to believe that our personal success/failure triggers are identical.

I purposefully overestimate in cases such as this.

For folks who are active, overestimating intake can be as problematic as underestimating is for folks who have to mind every last calorie.

When I say "overestimate," I mean I overestimate by a couple of calories. If a food item calculates to 43.23424, then I will round it off to 43. A tiny overestimate won't do much harm. I could see this as a problem if I overestimated by much more than that, but that's not what I meant.