Food scale: grams or measuring cups?

^^^^ Exactly like Babs! I would only use a cup for a standard liquid measurement. I use the scales for just about everything.

I love my digital scale and measure everything in grams. It's the most precise way to measure (especially as some non-metric volume measurements vary from country to country. Gallons and pints are not the same everywhere, for example. And, I've heard that a "cup" is different, as well.)

Also, "sliced, one cup" just isn't precise. Sliced how fine? Packed how hard? And, who wants to put their food into a measuring cup or spoon, first? With grams, all you have to do is add it to the plate and watch the numbers.

It doesn't surprise me that bran is looser in the factory than when you measured it home. But the weight won't change. Cups are the devil's measure. Use the weight, even if they put it second "1 cup (80 g)".

food = scale
liquids = cup

Make sure if you are putting the food into some kind of container (bowl/Measuring cup) and then measuring it, that you reset the scale to zero with the empty container on first so it doesnt count the weight of the vessle.

I suppose one way you could "check" is to see how many "cups" of oatmeal you logged over the last few days/weeks from that container - then compare it to the total number of servings and see if it comes out to be less. I actually have noticed that even though there were 13 (1/2 cup) servings in my tub of oatmeal, I only had accounted for 11.5 in my diary - meaning I was off by 225 calories. Not terrible over the course of a week, but still. I noticed that with peanut butter too - I just assumed that I was topping off the spoon or cup too much - but now I'm thinking its likely due to using a measuring cup instead of a scale!

This is exactly why it's better to weigh. There is a huge tendency to eat more then we think when using volume rather then weight, asyou just saw with your oatmeal.

I love my digital scale and measure everything in grams. It's the most precise way to measure (especially as some non-metric volume measurements vary from country to country. Gallons and pints are not the same everywhere, for example. And, I've heard that a "cup" is different, as well.)

Also, "sliced, one cup" just isn't precise. Sliced how fine? Packed how hard? And, who wants to put their food into a measuring cup or spoon, first? With grams, all you have to do is add it to the plate and watch the numbers.

Like.

Grams!!!

I did a test with my measuring cups and found I was measuring too many calories because my measuring cups were not accurate (at least with milk). I still use my cups because it is faster, but now I know not to reach surface tension when measuring with the cups.

Cups and grams are 2 different measurements!!

The only time 1 CUP (250ml) will equal 250grams is when the density of the food is 1 (water is one of the few things with a density of 1!)

CUP is Volume measurement and GRAMS is weight measurement (mass + gravity).

So keep measuring your liquids with cups and all your other ingredients on your food scale.

You can use scales to estimate volume. Just be aware that it's only an estimate.

Some manufacturers actively promote the use of scales for estimating volume e.g. Saltar calls it 'aquatronic'. All they're doing is measuring the gram value and calling it ml. You can do the same with any scale.

Water has a density of 1 g/ml so you can measure 500 g of water and call it 500 ml. Many common liquids (e.g. milk, cream) have densities (hence error) within 5% of water. For ice cream, the error is within 10%. Yogurt is somewhere between the two. For honey and syrup, the error extends to 40% but you'd probably want weight measures for that anyway.