Silly / Stupid / Obvious Question about Salad

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crescentgaia
crescentgaia Posts: 71 Member
in Food and Nutrition
How do you weigh your salad? Do you use a food scale or do you use measuring cups? I ask this because I'm trying to eat more veggies and the salad mix bag is a really easy way to go right now. Hopefully, in the future, I can get off the crutch and use my own lettuce and whatnot, but just trying to get back on track. :)

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  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    I don't weight my salad. I just eyeball it. If I'm using a 4 cup bowl and it is filled halfway, I log it as 2 cups of salad or maybe 2 cups of lettuce and then add in a few other vegetables (e.g., 6 cherry tomatoes, 1/2 cucumber, etc.)
  • nicsflyingcircus
    nicsflyingcircus Posts: 2,489 Member
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    I do weight in grams because it is easy to throw the bowl on the scale, turn it on, then toss my romaine in there as I chop. Ditto if I add spinach and oyher things like onion, cukes, celery. I usually do salad with meat, so I need the scale anyway. I also add my dressing by grams, so what's weighing the lettuce cost me? Two seconds and an extra push of a button.
  • acheben
    acheben Posts: 476 Member
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    I weigh everything that I add to the salad but only because that is the easiest thing for me. I already use my scale to weigh the dressing, so why not hit the tare button a few more times and weigh it all?
  • sculli123
    sculli123 Posts: 1,221 Member
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    I buy mine pre-packaged usually. Other than that if I get a salad at the work cafeteria you have to weigh it when you pay for it anyway.
  • Rhaynestorm
    Rhaynestorm Posts: 62 Member
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    I don't weigh most of my salad ingredients because the calorie count is pretty low anyway. 2 cups of lettuce is only around 20 calories. If I add cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, etc, I usually just eyeball them. If I add higher calorie ingredients (like tuna, chicken, cheese, etc) I weigh those and I measure out the salad dressing by tablespoon.
  • mwcontois
    mwcontois Posts: 44 Member
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    My salad was originally weighed out per each ingredient type...so kale...so many ounces, grape tomatoes...so many (count), cucumber (ounces)...etc...then you can save it as a recipe to quickly copy over each day. My girlfriend makes it each night. She doesn't weigh each ingredient each night, but sort of eyeballs it and it is basically the same each day...or close enough. I am trying to keep away from processed salad dressing...that sabotages the whole salad. the thing that differs on my salad from day to day is protein sources, which is dependent upon what I have around...so that is added separately each lunch. For instance, one salad might have tuna, another might have cottage cheese (no salt added, low fat), another might have chicken breast chunks...

    As long as the ingredients are roughly the same volume and weight each time, your overall salad should be fairly close in calories in my humble opinion.
  • crescentgaia
    crescentgaia Posts: 71 Member
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    Awesome - thank you all! I thought it would be best to weight it (side note, I love my food scale) but then was second guessing myself. Happening a lot lately, due to being stuck at my current weight for a couple weeks now, but I'm not giving up.
  • Joanne_happygramma
    Joanne_happygramma Posts: 207 Member
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    I don't weigh most of my salad ingredients because the calorie count is pretty low anyway. 2 cups of lettuce is only around 20 calories. If I add cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, etc, I usually just eyeball them. If I add higher calorie ingredients (like tuna, chicken, cheese, etc) I weigh those and I measure out the salad dressing by tablespoon.

    This ^^^ and it never hurts to guess more than less with food (I do the opposite with exercise).
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I weigh everything. Put bowl on scale, tare. Add lettuce, tare. Add tomatoes, tare. Etc etc. For salad dressing (when I use it) I typically weigh it too.
  • dbmata
    dbmata Posts: 12,951 Member
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    How do you weigh your salad? Do you use a food scale or do you use measuring cups? I ask this because I'm trying to eat more veggies and the salad mix bag is a really easy way to go right now. Hopefully, in the future, I can get off the crutch and use my own lettuce and whatnot, but just trying to get back on track. :)

    Always use grams.
  • ForeverCharlie
    ForeverCharlie Posts: 183 Member
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    I measure all my veggies in measuring cups... or rather, I used to. I've done it for 3 years now and I can estimate now with 99% accuracy how much I'm eating so I don't need to measure.
  • dfranch
    dfranch Posts: 207 Member
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    I don't weigh the lettuce, tomato, cucumbers. I just guess because the calories are so low. Things which are higher in calories like dressing, cheese, croutons I make sure to be more accurate.
  • yo_andi
    yo_andi Posts: 2,178 Member
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    I log mine in grams and I use my food scale to weigh :)

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