Surprises on the food scale.

Loads... Both pleasantly surprising and unpleasantly surprising! Weighing is the only way to really keep a track of what you are eating! I bought some cups like you use in the US, but found differences with all on the scale, when I compared.... Different cup sizes perhaps!:ohwell:

I'v'e only recently started to almost exclusively use my scale vs. measuring things. In the negative side, nut servings and banans are too small! Pouting. But some nice surprises are bread (I tend to buy from individual bakeries instead of sandwich bread at the supermarket), certain crumbled cheeses, bacon (woot woot) and oatmeal.

Luckily I tend to find the opposite when weighing packaged foods. They're lighter most of the time, particularly chicken breasts and pan-seared fish.

Yesterday, I was quite surprised at Brazil nuts. While planning the latter part of the day meal-wise, I had some calories left (like 40, big deal) that I wanted to try to take advantage of. I measured one nut which came to 4g, which is around 25 calories. One. Yeah, I didn't even bother.

I cannot tell you how much time I have spent combing through the MFP data base looking for my food entries to have grams or ounces rather than being listed as "1 cup chopped", or "one piece/slice". It's made a huge difference logging food and losing weight.

Surprisingly I've never used one and I turned out ok

Weighing pasta servings make me sad, was def surprised how little was in X amount of grams

I am learning to Google nutrition facts up on the foods I eat then add them to the MFP database in grams. I mean really....1 large potato...1 fish filet...oven baked fries (20)....how big are these items if you don't do them at least by ounces? I like grams better because it is more accurate. There are so many that don't list ounces or grams, it just says "1 medium potato" or "1 fish filet" or "oven baked fries (20)". These folks are not taking into account that your medium might not be my medium if there are no ounces or grams counted. That is like 1 fish filet. I fileted bluegill, small pan fish. I am certain a salmon filet or tuna filet has many more calories. That is why I googled to find how many calories were in 100 grams of a bluegill filet and baked potato. I can figure it from there easily but that guessing game sounds to me like it is just any easy way for someone to cheat...but who are they cheating...themselves. Sad

The only disappointing thing has been my potatoes. Sometimes I want a baked potato as a meal. Jeeesus. Apparently we have GIANT potatoes. Upwards of 300 cals.

Sometimes what really surprises me is serving sizes. Some times WAY more than you'd wanna eat (a TBS of balsamic glaze? Way too much even on a giant dinner salad!) or the amount of carbs in pasta! I eat one ounce, suggested serving is two but I recall thinking two was absolutely ridiculously too small. lol

If you want grams and ounces it's usually more effective to put in usda after each item. Mix also have added the word grams into a search as well.

I once saw someone log 3c of cheese and 1c of ketchup in a meal (it happened often enoigh!). I actually messaged them to double check that their adds were not estimations when we got on the topic of it. lol

GRANOLA! Before I started weighing my food I would eat a bowl of granola with pouring yoghurt. Well, I measured out a serving..45g or something crazy and figured out that the day before I had consumed like 2000 calories in cereal :sad: . Will never eat it again.

I was pretty spot on with eyeballing my meats, but my big surprise was vegetables. The database and I strongly disagree on what a medium sweet potato looks like.

Sometimes what really surprises me is serving sizes. Some times WAY more than you'd wanna eat (a TBS of balsamic glaze? Way too much even on a giant dinner salad!)

really? because I easily use at least 2 tablespoons for a full salad. One for just my own salad. I don't find it goes that far if you are using a lot of lettuce- less lettuce- less issue- but I don't really find dressing goes that far- and I LOVE me some balaslamic vinaigrette.

Update: I saw a mention of cheese. OMG, I never knew there was that much cheese in an ounce. I shirted myself so many times.

that much in an ounce??

did I miss read that- when i weighed out my first ounce of cheese I almost cried, as a lover of sharp chedder- an ounce just makes me epically sad.

Agreed on the cheese part. I can easily put 3 ounces of sharp cheddar on a paper plate serving of nachos.

For the cheese people, get some good quality cheddar and grate on the finest bit of the grater. It goes much further! If you cut cheese in chunks, then yes, that's a sad state of affairs.

Most of the time when I weigh food it weighs a bit more than the stated weight on the package. A few times the food has weighed exactly what it was supposed to weigh. And only ONE time out of the literally hundreds of times I have weighed food has the food actually weighed less than it was supposed to weigh. Now that I know this, it really doesn't surprise me that the majority of Americans have a weight problem.

The better part of a decade ago I worked in the bakery of a grocery store. The manager would always make sure to let us know that we were to weigh things out and then put a little extra to make sure it went over the weight. Things such as doughnuts were made slightly larger (but not much) then labeled since there isn't really a way to put "a little extra" of a doughnut in a package. The reason was that they could get in legal trouble with the Department of Weights and Measures if it was any less than the package stated so it was better to go over a little than take a chance on being under. This was in Vermont but I would think that the same holds true for all states.