"Why should I use a food scale?"
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yellingkimber
Posts: 229 Member
So, I was in the middle of prepping dinner when suddenly, I remembered seeing a zillion posts of people not understanding why a food scale is useful to have when trying to lose weight. "But I use measuring cups!" I got curious, so I decided to weigh out a serving of pasta and then see how it fit into measuring cups.
Here's what a serving of tonight's pasta looks like.
Here it is weighed out.
Naturally, I realized afterward that I don't even have a 3/4 cup measuring cup, so I made do. Not ideal, but I could have stuffed so much more pasta in that 1/4 cup!
Seriously, look how much room is left over.
It took me another 15 g of pasta to fill'er up. If my math is right, that's another 48 calories worth of pasta that I wouldn't have been accounting for, which isn't that bad, but that's only for one ingredient of my dinner! I was thinking about putting bacon in the sauce. Info on the back of the package says "2 slices or 15 grams" - one slice is 15 grams, which I wouldn't have known without my scale. That would have been an additional 70 calories, which means I would have been 118 calories over what I thought I was consuming!
If you're one of those people that says "I'm eating 1200 calories and I'm not losing a pound!" I highly suggest buying a scale. The one I'm using was only $7 at Walmart.
Here's what a serving of tonight's pasta looks like.
Here it is weighed out.
Naturally, I realized afterward that I don't even have a 3/4 cup measuring cup, so I made do. Not ideal, but I could have stuffed so much more pasta in that 1/4 cup!
Seriously, look how much room is left over.
It took me another 15 g of pasta to fill'er up. If my math is right, that's another 48 calories worth of pasta that I wouldn't have been accounting for, which isn't that bad, but that's only for one ingredient of my dinner! I was thinking about putting bacon in the sauce. Info on the back of the package says "2 slices or 15 grams" - one slice is 15 grams, which I wouldn't have known without my scale. That would have been an additional 70 calories, which means I would have been 118 calories over what I thought I was consuming!
If you're one of those people that says "I'm eating 1200 calories and I'm not losing a pound!" I highly suggest buying a scale. The one I'm using was only $7 at Walmart.
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Replies
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yellingkimber wrote: »So, I was in the middle of prepping dinner when suddenly, I remembered seeing a zillion posts of people not understanding why a food scale is useful to have when trying to lose weight. "But I use measuring cups!" I got curious, so I decided to weigh out a serving of pasta and then see how it fit into measuring cups.
Here's what a serving of tonight's pasta looks like.
Here it is weighed out.
Naturally, I realized afterward that I don't even have a 3/4 cup measuring cup, so I made do. Not ideal, but I could have stuffed so much more pasta in that 1/4 cup!
Seriously, look how much room is left over.
It took me another 15 g of pasta to fill'er up. If my math is right, that's another 48 calories worth of pasta that I wouldn't have been accounting for, which isn't that bad, but that's only for one ingredient of my dinner! I was thinking about putting bacon in the sauce. Info on the back of the package says "2 slices or 15 grams" - one slice is 15 grams, which I wouldn't have known without my scale. That would have been an additional 70 calories, which means I would have been 118 calories over what I thought I was consuming!
If you're one of those people that says "I'm eating 1200 calories and I'm not losing a pound!" I highly suggest buying a scale. The one I'm using was only $7 at Walmart.
It's usually 15 grams after it's cooked. The package usually says 2 pan fried slices.9 -
Had the same thing happen with one cereal. I was eating close to 50% more calories than I thought using cups. I stopped eating the cereal out of spite.
On the bacon, though. That is a bit different as it is one of the foods where the calorie count changes with cooking. So it kinda depends on what the package is telling you, but in most cases the serving size is based on the cooked weight, which can be half the raw weight depending on how it is cooked.9 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »Had the same thing happen with one cereal. I was eating close to 50% more calories than I thought using cups. I stopped eating the cereal out of spite.
On the bacon, though. That is a bit different as it is one of the foods where the calorie count changes with cooking. So it kinda depends on what the package is telling you, but in most cases the serving size is based on the cooked weight, which can be half the raw weight depending on how it is cooked.
This particular package stipulates both raw and cooked and I was going by the raw weight - I should have mentioned that!
On the bright side, I realized that I was totally scamming myself out of peanut butter and could eat way more than I was eyeing as a "tablespoon".17 -
Oh yeah. The scale is a very "educational" tool. Just because it's habit to overeat pastas, rice, etc and they are calorific!5
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Yep, pasta is a frequent offender when it comes to getting more calories when using volume instead of weight. I made this picture when the subject came up a while back:
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Thank you for this thread! Just ordered a scale off Amazon for $10+ free shipping, it really opened my eyes to see the difference in weights versus cups in the pics,eeks!19
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Chef_Barbell wrote: »yellingkimber wrote: »So, I was in the middle of prepping dinner when suddenly, I remembered seeing a zillion posts of people not understanding why a food scale is useful to have when trying to lose weight. "But I use measuring cups!" I got curious, so I decided to weigh out a serving of pasta and then see how it fit into measuring cups.
Here's what a serving of tonight's pasta looks like.
Here it is weighed out.
Naturally, I realized afterward that I don't even have a 3/4 cup measuring cup, so I made do. Not ideal, but I could have stuffed so much more pasta in that 1/4 cup!
Seriously, look how much room is left over.
It took me another 15 g of pasta to fill'er up. If my math is right, that's another 48 calories worth of pasta that I wouldn't have been accounting for, which isn't that bad, but that's only for one ingredient of my dinner! I was thinking about putting bacon in the sauce. Info on the back of the package says "2 slices or 15 grams" - one slice is 15 grams, which I wouldn't have known without my scale. That would have been an additional 70 calories, which means I would have been 118 calories over what I thought I was consuming!
If you're one of those people that says "I'm eating 1200 calories and I'm not losing a pound!" I highly suggest buying a scale. The one I'm using was only $7 at Walmart.
It's usually 15 grams after it's cooked. The package usually says 2 pan fried slices.
I don't trust bacon packaging at all. First, 'pan fried' really doesn't mean anything because it won't weigh the same if it's crispy or not, then even when it's crispy, it's typically 30% heavier than what it should be for me. So my 2 slices weigh more than the 3 slices one serving is supposed to be, for example. Or 'how to eat 80 extra calories without noticing'.
Or those Lenny & Larry cookies that are often 135g instead of 114g. That's like 70 extra calories or something...2 -
I think it should be 3/4 cup cooked, not dry and hard.0
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I think it should be 3/4 cup cooked, not dry and hard.
That wouldn't be consistently accurate as the cooked weight will vary depending on how long it was cooked. The longer it's cooked, the more water it absorbs, the heavier the final cooked weight will be. The calories of the dry weight never change.12 -
I think it should be 3/4 cup cooked, not dry and hard.
"All of our nutritional information is based on an uncooked measurement since some pastas will double or even triple in volume."
-Ronzoni's website. Usually if a label for pasta doesn't specify, they mean the dry weight.17 -
I was having hot chocolate tonight. The instructions said "add 5 heaped teaspoons (28gr)". In reality 2 heaped teaspoons were 28gr.
5 were more like 60gr...
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gebeziseva wrote: »I was having hot chocolate tonight. The instructions said "add 5 heaped teaspoons (28gr)". In reality 2 heaped teaspoons were 28gr.
5 were more like 60gr...
Yikes! That's a huge discrepancy.1 -
"1 cup of pasta" also depends massively on the shape of the pasta. 1 cup of macaroni weighs a whole lot more than 1 cup of rigatoni (big tubes with lots of empty space inside). I've never understood how we could expect "1 cup of pasta" to mean anything.10
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livingleanlivingclean wrote: »
In the UK the label specifies if the calories are for raw ("as sold") or cooked and it specifies if cooked - how exactly. Usually labels say "for 100gr cooked as per instructions". For example for pasta it states to "use 80gr per portion" and how long to boil it and the calories are given for "one portion cooked as per instructions".
For meat the calories are usually given for "100gr oven baked" or "pan fried" depending on the type of meat and they always add "as per instructions" where they specify the time and if oil is included for pan frying for example. I've been counting calories for more than a year now and I've found my counting to be dead accurate so I trust the labels completely.
From what I've read in these forums, the US labels don't necessarily specify these things so I'd assume raw unless otherwise stated.
ETA:
When I say I trust labels, that is to mean the ones given in grams. The volumes for solids are always way off. I ignore them completely.4 -
RedheadedPrincess14 wrote: »
A calorie is a calorie no matter the source.17 -
RedheadedPrincess14 wrote: »
you would be surprised,oatmeal is another one that when weighed compared to measured is an eye opener.5 -
RedheadedPrincess14 wrote: »
Regardless of whether or not you consider the calories "clean" it doesn't change the fact that in my picture, if I used the cup measurement instead of the 56g measurement, I would be eating 289 calories while logging 200 calories. A calorie surplus is a calorie surplus. You don't magically not gain just because it was from what you consider a "clean" source.21 -
just had this with my bread, 40g is the 1 slice serving....every single slice in the pack weighed 65-68 g13
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