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Weighs & measurements
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artdamien
Posts: 1 Member
Everytime I search for a product to enter on myfitnesspalon, i find that there is a wide variety of different terms for weighs & measurements: e.g one bowl of soup, or two spoons of sugar, etc. There needs to be consistency to obtain a more accurate calorie or fat, sugar intake with each item. Why not use metric, grams, mls, instead of bowls and spoons. Maybe Myfitnesspal could convert these terminologies in a standard weigh & measurement? Cheers
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Replies
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Everytime I search for a product to enter on myfitnesspalon, i find that there is a wide variety of different terms for weighs & measurements: e.g one bowl of soup, or two spoons of sugar, etc. There needs to be consistency to obtain a more accurate calorie or fat, sugar intake with each item. Why not use metric, grams, mls, instead of bowls and spoons. Maybe Myfitnesspal could convert these terminologies in a standard weigh & measurement? Cheers
It's because the database is user crowdsourced and not only includes individual food items but also various recipes created by users. MFP doesn't do anything with the food database. There would be no way to accurately convert a "bowl" of something to a definitive unit of measure.
For the most part I've always been able to find individual food items with grams or ounces to log appropriately.2 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Everytime I search for a product to enter on myfitnesspalon, i find that there is a wide variety of different terms for weighs & measurements: e.g one bowl of soup, or two spoons of sugar, etc. There needs to be consistency to obtain a more accurate calorie or fat, sugar intake with each item. Why not use metric, grams, mls, instead of bowls and spoons. Maybe Myfitnesspal could convert these terminologies in a standard weigh & measurement? Cheers
It's because the database is user crowdsourced and not only includes individual food items but also various recipes created by users. MFP doesn't do anything with the food database. There would be no way to accurately convert a "bowl" of something to a definitive unit of measure.
For the most part I've always been able to find individual food items with grams or ounces to log appropriately.
Yup, takes a bit of hunting around, but it's rare that there isn't one there.
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cwolfman13 wrote: »For the most part I've always been able to find individual food items with grams or ounces to log appropriately.
I am always a little relieved when I add a food and see it has a "by 1 gram" option.
Weigh it, enter it, done!
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We're in the middle of a big project to bring more standardized serving size options. But as mentioned by others, most of the items are entered by users so they might have entered what they had on hand or was was on the label at the time. But we're working on getting what we can converted.0
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One of the problems is that labels can be wrong, sometimes very wrong. As a result, even if the person entering them with no error whatsoever, the information can still be erroneous. Sometimes, such errors are obvious, such as in the case of beans that are claimed to have 0 fibre. Sometimes, the errors are less easy to notice and only obviously wrong when analysing the label. Not everyone seems to get that. I wonder, wouldn't it be a good idea to flag potential errors with a warning that encourages the user to double-check with other sources?We're in the middle of a big project to bring more standardized serving size options. But as mentioned by others, most of the items are entered by users so they might have entered what they had on hand or was was on the label at the time. But we're working on getting what we can converted.
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Everytime I search for a product to enter on myfitnesspalon, i find that there is a wide variety of different terms for weighs & measurements: e.g one bowl of soup, or two spoons of sugar, etc. There needs to be consistency to obtain a more accurate calorie or fat, sugar intake with each item. Why not use metric, grams, mls, instead of bowls and spoons. Maybe Myfitnesspal could convert these terminologies in a standard weigh & measurement? Cheers
The main problem is, I think, is that people from the USA balk at such standardised data even though their own USDA uses the system of Kcal (and others) per 100 g. I always wonder how they can accept data about 1 cup of baby spinach leaves, or 1 cup of French fries. How can that ever be even remotely accurate?1 -
I think the problem could be solved if the food chosen from the database could be edited. Many times the nutrition information is incomplete. I have a potassium restricted diet so I need to log potassium. If all the other nutrients are correct I could just edit it to include the potassium or correct any incorrect amounts rather than adding a whole new food to the food database. As it is now I need to create my own food and enter all of the information which is time intensive. Thanks for listening.1
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I think the problem could be solved if the food chosen from the database could be edited. Many times the nutrition information is incomplete. I have a potassium restricted diet so I need to log potassium. If all the other nutrients are correct I could just edit it to include the potassium or correct any incorrect amounts rather than adding a whole new food to the food database. As it is now I need to create my own food and enter all of the information which is time intensive. Thanks for listening.
If you're on the app, you can:
- 'report' the food at the bottom of the entry (make no illusions, nothing is being reported)
- rock the box 'wrong/missing nutrition information'
- then correct the food AND tick the box 'save to my foods'
You can then find the corrected food in My Foods for future use0 -
BartBVanBockstaele wrote: »Everytime I search for a product to enter on myfitnesspalon, i find that there is a wide variety of different terms for weighs & measurements: e.g one bowl of soup, or two spoons of sugar, etc. There needs to be consistency to obtain a more accurate calorie or fat, sugar intake with each item. Why not use metric, grams, mls, instead of bowls and spoons. Maybe Myfitnesspal could convert these terminologies in a standard weigh & measurement? Cheers
The main problem is, I think, is that people from the USA balk at such standardised data even though their own USDA uses the system of Kcal (and others) per 100 g. I always wonder how they can accept data about 1 cup of baby spinach leaves, or 1 cup of French fries. How can that ever be even remotely accurate?
Ironically, some of the best/most accurate database entries - ones loaded to the MFP database from the USDA database when MFP started - have "1 cup" as their default serving size, even for foods that it would be crazy to measure in cups. But in those entries, the drop down will typically contain not only other measures, but other types of measures, both weight and volume plus sometimes size or counts: Grams, milliliters, cups, tablespoons, ounces, fluid ounces, 3" diameter (for stuff like apples), 3 count (for stuff like cherry tomatoes), etc.
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I noticed that as well. I still find it problematic because it is not always clear which measure is a "translation" and which one is the original but aside from that, it perpetuates a crazy idea and one that unintentionally promotes conspiracy-theory type thinking. Not to put too fine a point on it, it seems problematic to me that "grammes are great for scientists and cups are good-enough for the others" (in North America anyway).BartBVanBockstaele wrote: »Everytime I search for a product to enter on myfitnesspalon, i find that there is a wide variety of different terms for weighs & measurements: e.g one bowl of soup, or two spoons of sugar, etc. There needs to be consistency to obtain a more accurate calorie or fat, sugar intake with each item. Why not use metric, grams, mls, instead of bowls and spoons. Maybe Myfitnesspal could convert these terminologies in a standard weigh & measurement? Cheers
The main problem is, I think, is that people from the USA balk at such standardised data even though their own USDA uses the system of Kcal (and others) per 100 g. I always wonder how they can accept data about 1 cup of baby spinach leaves, or 1 cup of French fries. How can that ever be even remotely accurate?
Ironically, some of the best/most accurate database entries - ones loaded to the MFP database from the USDA database when MFP started - have "1 cup" as their default serving size, even for foods that it would be crazy to measure in cups. But in those entries, the drop down will typically contain not only other measures, but other types of measures, both weight and volume plus sometimes size or counts: Grams, milliliters, cups, tablespoons, ounces, fluid ounces, 3" diameter (for stuff like apples), 3 count (for stuff like cherry tomatoes), etc.
Calorie counts are imprecise enough. Of course, part of that is inherent to the fact that foods (such as apples or [cherry] tomatoes) are natural and therefore have natural variability. Do we really need to sustain the myth that Americans are so intellectually deficient as not to be able to work with a scale and in so doing add to the confusion? Europeans don't seem to have a problem with it, so I refuse to believe that it would be too intellectually challenging for Americans, unless someone can provide solid evidence for such a (I think) ridiculous claim.
That said, I quite like the idea of energy density, but based on weight, not volume.
For example, a "cup of popcorn" may well be quite low in energy density, but that is largely an illusion, since stomach fluids will reduce that volume dramatically within seconds where a cup of cheddar will not undergo such reduction. Yet, when looked at per gramme, they are really similar, and that is certain to approach stomach-reality much closer (just throw some popcorn in a glass of water or do like I used to do and grind it up in a blender or a food processor (tastes great by the way, it is a trigger food for me):
According to the USDA:
air-popped popcorn = 387 kcal per 100 g (1 cup is 8 g - 31 kcal)
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/167959/nutrients
cheddar = 409 kcal per 100 g (1 cup is 105 g - 429 kcal)
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/328637/nutrients
In other words, there is no material difference between the two, even if popcorn is very often promoted as a low-cal snack. But let's be honest: since when has 8 grammes of anything been a "snack"?
Maybe a system in which liquids and solids are put in separate categories, where liquids are measured in ml and solids in grammes would be a reasonable compromise? I have to confess I am somewhat of an extremis because I weigh my liquids as well although it is more an issue of laziness and not one of scientific rigour. My tiny bachelor galley kitchen is not a lab and a scale is simply more practical. That said, I don't count the calories in water and that is pretty much the only liquid I use anyway <giggle>.
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This is slightly off-topic, but because you talked about apples, I was reminded of something I notice quite often: that people, especially bloggers, often copy each other without verifying what they are copying. A rather striking example of that is here:3" diameter (for stuff like apples)
Source: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods/apples
This example is striking (to me, anyway) because these rather different data are mentioned in the same article, as you can see in the link. All that tells me, is that it is best not to believe what they write. In this case, it is not even as if the article was written by someone who is not expected to know any better:
With numbers like that (and he is using grams), I submit that adding even less precise measurements is really not helpful. That in turn leads others to just reject calories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJ0Z0DRumg
It needs to be said that this is only his clickbait title, and except for a questionable bit at the end, it is actually a good lecture.
I think that nutrition facts should not be some unimportant afterthought to be handled by a starting intern at some marketing department, but should be checked by someone (or a committee) that can hold people accountable (while also being held accountable themselves), such as being forced to recall a product when labelling is wrong, as the FDA frequently does with medication. Nutrition facts should be true, or at the very least plausible.
Calories are incredibly important, and as the OP noted, some standardisation would not be unwelcome (as long as that standardisation makes sense).
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