Weighing in "cups"
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Except that the rules state (at least in the US) that items can't be underweight and can be up to 20% overweight. That means that weights in packages skew heavy.EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
Assuming everything you eat is packaged in a single serving size, and matches the listed weight perfectly every time (newsflash: it won't) that's a valid point. Otherwise, you still need to weigh things.
Nope. On average the errors cancel each other out statistically. So, I may buy a piece of fish and the package says 138g (Just by way of example). It may be inaccurate but on average the errors will cancel themselves out (some will be under and some over but the law of large numbers mean that over time the data will be an accurate reflection of calorie consumption). Similarly kitchen scales may be inaccurate and often are. The point is that I can choose to take that weight and refer to an entry on the site that shows the nutrition for 1g or 100g but I can't refer to an entry for a cup of fish which is what a lot of the entries refer to.6 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
Assuming everything you eat is packaged in a single serving size, and matches the listed weight perfectly every time (newsflash: it won't) that's a valid point. Otherwise, you still need to weigh things.
Nope. On average the errors cancel each other out statistically. So, I may buy a piece of fish and the package says 138g (Just by way of example). It may be inaccurate but on average the errors will cancel themselves out (some will be under and some over but the law of large numbers mean that over time the data will be an accurate reflection of calorie consumption). Similarly kitchen scales may be inaccurate and often are. The point is that I can choose to take that weight and refer to an entry on the site that shows the nutrition for 1g or 100g but I can't refer to an entry for a cup of fish which is what a lot of the entries refer to.
Then don't use the cup of fish entry. It's a well known fact that the database is littered with *kitten* entries. (There's an entry for covfefe, FFS. 0 calories, in case you're interested.) You're far from the first to notice and complain about that.
My digital kitchen scale isn't inaccurate, nor would I think are most. Since I'm eating at a 250 calorie deficit, I can't count on the inaccuracies to cancel each other out.5 -
Not all of us use packaged foods. Clean food, such as fresh fruits and veggies, don't come with a weight or volume. I use my own measurements (which reflect the Body for Life method) which is generally using my palm or fist for measurements. But then, I've been doing that long enough I know what that is, generally, in weight and volume, and I don't stress over the odd ounce or milligram. In the beginning, I used a scale. Sometimes I use cups and tablespoons. Protein powder, for example, measures by scoop. I change it to cups as scoops can vary. Generally speaking in imperial measurements, by volume, a cup is 8 oz, or 16 tablespoons. A teaspoon is generally 1/3 of a tablespoon. Now, a pint is different in the UK vs the US, generally speaking. Even packaged foods will use cups, etc. Keep in mind using something like "ounces" can be confusing, as it could mean weight or volume, while a cup is always volume.
This site is an example of the use of cups as well as other measurements. https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/nutrition_insights_uploads/insight11.pdf8 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
So if the bag of rice says a serving is 28g, how do you know you are serving yourself 28g if you don't weigh it?
Regardless, a cup is an imperial volume measure that a lot of people use. Just because it isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to others. MFP doesn't tell anyone what or how to log, so it needs to be as flexible as possible for people all over the world to use the diary however they want to.7 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
And??? That doesn't mean that's what the food weighs. It means that IF it weighs 100 grams, then it is 100 calories (made up numbers). But it isn't automatically 100 grams in weight.
Nope. Most food packaging shows the weight of the food. Some packaging also shows the nutrition per 100g but thattends to be processed food which I try not to eat for obvious reasons.
My protein bars show they are 62 grams. Guess how many are actually 62 grams when I weigh them?
You realize food labels are allowed to be off by 20%, right?
It doesn't matter. If half are off by 20% in one direction and half are off by 20% in the other direction then the total is accurate. That's just standard deviation. The same is true about nutrition content. There is a significant amount of error in the food nutrition composition but the errors cancel each other out through the law of large numbers. So the recording of sodium,. or saturated fat or protein, or METs or calories expended or anything that is measured other than in lab conditions is accepted as having an error margin but the errors are only material in isolation.12 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
My MIL, born and raised in England, hates the metric system. We (my English hub and me, American), tend to use both. As someone said, the entries are user based, and not everyone is going to use standard measures. Best to use your own. When it comes to white rice, 1 cup uncooked rice (by volume, not weight) in 2 cups of water (volume) yields 3 cups of cooked rice (volume). I wouldn't use cups for steak, but for veg, chopped fruit, and cooked grains, and any thing else appropriate. It helps being a certified gourmet cook, which I am. You can use different modes of measure, whether metric or imperial, as you choose.
Cheers!0 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
So if the bag of rice says a serving is 28g, how do you know you are serving yourself 28g if you don't weigh it?
Regardless, a cup is an imperial volume measure that a lot of people use. Just because it isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to others. MFP doesn't tell anyone what or how to log, so it needs to be as flexible as possible for people all over the world to use the diary however they want to.
Fine but to turn volume into weight requires information about mass which is not readily available0 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »IMHO the site should regulate the available measuring systems so that the information on the site is meaningful. How big is the measuring cup? Does a cup of x weigh the same as a cup of y? And so on. Sometimes there seem to be 10 of these nonsense "cup" entries for 1 usable entry. What's the point of sharing information that can't be used by others?
I take it you're not from the US...a measuring cup is a standard tool in the US. Yes, weight is more accurate, but many labels in the US use cups as a unit of measure and since the database is populated by users looking at the food label, then there will obviously be entries with "cups"
Here is what measuring cups look like...
2 -
LeGypsyRov wrote: »Not all of us use packaged foods. Clean food, such as fresh fruits and veggies, don't come with a weight or volume. I use my own measurements (which reflect the Body for Life method) which is generally using my palm or fist for measurements. But then, I've been doing that long enough I know what that is, generally, in weight and volume, and I don't stress over the odd ounce or milligram. In the beginning, I used a scale. Sometimes I use cups and tablespoons. Protein powder, for example, measures by scoop. I change it to cups as scoops can vary. Generally speaking in imperial measurements, by volume, a cup is 8 oz, or 16 tablespoons. A teaspoon is generally 1/3 of a tablespoon. Now, a pint is different in the UK vs the US, generally speaking. Even packaged foods will use cups, etc. Keep in mind using something like "ounces" can be confusing, as it could mean weight or volume, while a cup is always volume.
This site is an example of the use of cups as well as other measurements. https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/nutrition_insights_uploads/insight11.pdf
I take the point but presumably you have reliable measurement. Someone earlier in the thread indicated that a cup does have a universally accepted measurement in milliliters which is really helpful. Aside from that it seems(a) subjective and (b) a unit of volume not weight which cannot be easily translated4 -
quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
And??? That doesn't mean that's what the food weighs. It means that IF it weighs 100 grams, then it is 100 calories (made up numbers). But it isn't automatically 100 grams in weight.
Nope. Most food packaging shows the weight of the food. Some packaging also shows the nutrition per 100g but thattends to be processed food which I try not to eat for obvious reasons.
My protein bars show they are 62 grams. Guess how many are actually 62 grams when I weigh them?
You realize food labels are allowed to be off by 20%, right?
And the weight will extremely rarely be less than 62 grams as otherwise the customer might file a law suite for having been cheated....
(I once weighed a box of 24 protein bars. Not a one was under the weight listed. A few were the exact weight. Most where over...)3 -
Except that the rules state (at least in the US) that items can't be underweight and can be up to 20% overweight. That means that weights in packages skew heavy.EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
Assuming everything you eat is packaged in a single serving size, and matches the listed weight perfectly every time (newsflash: it won't) that's a valid point. Otherwise, you still need to weigh things.
Nope. On average the errors cancel each other out statistically. So, I may buy a piece of fish and the package says 138g (Just by way of example). It may be inaccurate but on average the errors will cancel themselves out (some will be under and some over but the law of large numbers mean that over time the data will be an accurate reflection of calorie consumption). Similarly kitchen scales may be inaccurate and often are. The point is that I can choose to take that weight and refer to an entry on the site that shows the nutrition for 1g or 100g but I can't refer to an entry for a cup of fish which is what a lot of the entries refer to.
Fair point. I imagine, for commercial reasons, that attempts are made not to be overweight. But items do change weight through dehydration so if the weighing is done and point A in the food chain it may shift weight by point B so some tolerance of standard deviation has to be allowed for.0 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
So if the bag of rice says a serving is 28g, how do you know you are serving yourself 28g if you don't weigh it?
Regardless, a cup is an imperial volume measure that a lot of people use. Just because it isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to others. MFP doesn't tell anyone what or how to log, so it needs to be as flexible as possible for people all over the world to use the diary however they want to.
Fine but to turn volume into weight requires information about mass which is not readily available
Maybe I'm not understanding, but how do you determine how much rice you are taking out of a bag? If you don't use cups, and you aren't weighing out grams, how do you know how much you're eating?6 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »IMHO the site should regulate the available measuring systems so that the information on the site is meaningful. How big is the measuring cup? Does a cup of x weigh the same as a cup of y? And so on. Sometimes there seem to be 10 of these nonsense "cup" entries for 1 usable entry. What's the point of sharing information that can't be used by others?
I take it you're not from the US...a measuring cup is a standard tool in the US. Yes, weight is more accurate, but many labels in the US use cups as a unit of measure and since the database is populated by users looking at the food label, then there will obviously be entries with "cups"
Here is what measuring cups look like...
...em that's 4 measuring cups? You're right I'm not from the US.0 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »IMHO the site should regulate the available measuring systems so that the information on the site is meaningful. How big is the measuring cup? Does a cup of x weigh the same as a cup of y? And so on. Sometimes there seem to be 10 of these nonsense "cup" entries for 1 usable entry. What's the point of sharing information that can't be used by others?
I take it you're not from the US...a measuring cup is a standard tool in the US. Yes, weight is more accurate, but many labels in the US use cups as a unit of measure and since the database is populated by users looking at the food label, then there will obviously be entries with "cups"
Here is what measuring cups look like...
...em that's 4 measuring cups? You're right I'm not from the US.
The largest one is 1 cup. The three smaller ones are 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 of a cup respectively. Standard for the US...6 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »IMHO the site should regulate the available measuring systems so that the information on the site is meaningful. How big is the measuring cup? Does a cup of x weigh the same as a cup of y? And so on. Sometimes there seem to be 10 of these nonsense "cup" entries for 1 usable entry. What's the point of sharing information that can't be used by others?
I take it you're not from the US...a measuring cup is a standard tool in the US. Yes, weight is more accurate, but many labels in the US use cups as a unit of measure and since the database is populated by users looking at the food label, then there will obviously be entries with "cups"
Here is what measuring cups look like...
...em that's 4 measuring cups? You're right I'm not from the US.
Yes...the largest one is 1 cup...then 1/2 cup...then 1/4 cup...then 1/3 cup1 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »IMHO the site should regulate the available measuring systems so that the information on the site is meaningful. How big is the measuring cup? Does a cup of x weigh the same as a cup of y? And so on. Sometimes there seem to be 10 of these nonsense "cup" entries for 1 usable entry. What's the point of sharing information that can't be used by others?
I take it you're not from the US...a measuring cup is a standard tool in the US. Yes, weight is more accurate, but many labels in the US use cups as a unit of measure and since the database is populated by users looking at the food label, then there will obviously be entries with "cups"
Here is what measuring cups look like...
...em that's 4 measuring cups? You're right I'm not from the US.
Yes. Standard sizes in a set are 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 cup. They are designed for dry ingredient measurements. We have different cups for measuring wet. Most every kitchen has a set of both.2 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
So if the bag of rice says a serving is 28g, how do you know you are serving yourself 28g if you don't weigh it?
Regardless, a cup is an imperial volume measure that a lot of people use. Just because it isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to others. MFP doesn't tell anyone what or how to log, so it needs to be as flexible as possible for people all over the world to use the diary however they want to.
Fine but to turn volume into weight requires information about mass which is not readily available
Maybe I'm not understanding, but how do you determine how much rice you are taking out of a bag? If you don't use cups, and you aren't weighing out grams, how do you know how much you're eating?
A bag of rice that has 500g of rice provides, for example, 4 servings of 125g. If I use 1/4 of the bag I can do so fairly reliably with the eye (like the person who uses the size of her hand) and accept the standard deviation, which I do. However I still need useable data about the content of 125g or rice.
The answer to the question I posted seems to be about cultural differences. The US obviously has a standard unit of measurement that the rest of the world does not use.
ON which note, I'm going to have a cup of tea. 0 calories.2 -
EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »quiksylver296 wrote: »EddieKingsley wrote: »So a cup of rice, tells me the volume not the weight but food calories are a weight-based measurement. If Americans don't usethe metric system, use Ounces and Pounds which at least can be meaningfully converted.
Sure I could use a food scale, and sometimes I do, but usually I am measuring against something that the store has measured and labelled. Like the steak that I had yesterday. I trawled through a dozen "cup" based entries for steak. Ridiculous.
Wait? You don't use a food scale? Then how do you know what anything weighs to enter it in the first place?
Food packaging shows weight in most cases.
So if the bag of rice says a serving is 28g, how do you know you are serving yourself 28g if you don't weigh it?
Regardless, a cup is an imperial volume measure that a lot of people use. Just because it isn't useful to you doesn't mean it isn't useful to others. MFP doesn't tell anyone what or how to log, so it needs to be as flexible as possible for people all over the world to use the diary however they want to.
Fine but to turn volume into weight requires information about mass which is not readily available
Maybe I'm not understanding, but how do you determine how much rice you are taking out of a bag? If you don't use cups, and you aren't weighing out grams, how do you know how much you're eating?
A bag of rice that has 500g of rice provides, for example, 4 servings of 125g. If I use 1/4 of the bag I can do so fairly reliably with the eye (like the person who uses the size of her hand) and accept the standard deviation, which I do. However I still need useable data about the content of 125g or rice.
The answer to the question I posted seems to be about cultural differences. The US obviously has a standard unit of measurement that the rest of the world does not use.
ON which note, I'm going to have a cup of tea. 0 calories.
Gotcha. I tried logging that way at first, but package measurements were simply off far too much to keep me at a consistent deficit. When I started weighing everything on the food scale I realized I was missing 100's of calories. If that ends up working for you, awesome. Some people can get by without it. If you find you get stuck and want to drill down more, the food scale will be invaluable. And you don't need to convert anything. If the package says a serving is 28g, you just put your portion on the scale and see if it weighs 28g or not.
Glad we got the cups thing figured out at least
5 -
Most North American cookbooks use cups and tablespoons. Sometimes ounces and pounds. Almost never grams. I usually do work out the conversions now, but I sure didn't when I started and I think it would have been too much hassle back then.
And I tend to buy a lot of foods in bulk. Sometimes a recipe just calls for a cup of flour or soaking 1.5 cups of dry beans and I don't bother running back to google "How many grams in 1.5 cups dry navy beans" etc. I just grab my measuring cup and scoop.4 -
estherdragonbat wrote: »Most North American cookbooks use cups and tablespoons. Sometimes ounces and pounds. Almost never grams. I usually do work out the conversions now, but I sure didn't when I started and I think it would have been too much hassle back then.
And I tend to buy a lot of foods in bulk. Sometimes a recipe just calls for a cup of flour or soaking 1.5 cups of dry beans and I don't bother running back to google "How many grams in 1.5 cups dry navy beans" etc. I just grab my measuring cup and scoop.
I place the empty cup on the scale, tare, scoop my cup, and weigh it. At least I know how many grams to enter into the recipe builder, even if it may or may not be off as per the recipe.5
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