THE WEIGHT OF THE MATTER

This week's blog is about what I consider to be one of the top two kitchen items necessary for eating healthily. As you may recall from a previous post, the first was a food slicer. The second is a food scale.

Many times nutrition labels have serving size listed by weight. So if you are eating based on calorie intake like I am, it's a must to get it right or you could be doing it all wrong lol!

In my experience, there are three categories of weigh-ins:

#1: Confirmation - This is the most commonly used. The label tells you how many grams a serving is so all you need to do is weigh your item. As in the cheese shown above, you just have to start off with a small slice and then add more until you get to the correct serving size.

#2: Verification - This is needed for generic labelling of food items. For instance, serving size will be listed as one medium potato, one large apple, one small banana, etc. You will need to weigh your apple to make sure your idea of large is the same as theirs.

 

#3: Customization - This one is used if you have sliced a loaf of bread yourself, especially an oval shaped one. If you have sliced it thinner than the store would have, you will need to find out how many grams less your slices are. Plus, with an oval shaped loaf,not all slices are the same size. The first few slices from each end will be smaller than centre ones so they will weigh less.

If you don't already own a kitchen scale, I hope you'll go out and buy yourself one. I just couldn't lose weight without weighing my food first :)

 

Just using what's available to me in our town, lol and all we have is Canadian Tire at the moment...the cheapest kitchen scale is a mechanical one...this is a Starfrit for $10.

 

And for the more popular easier to use digital style...this is a Starfrit for $20.


THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE:

Have some fun with your kitchen scale. LOL...play with your food! Find out just how wrong or right you've been about guesstimating the weight of your serving sizes :)

1. Grab a potato from your bag. Dig around to find one that you think is a medium potato. Now weigh it. Is it 150 grams?

2. Cut off a slice of cheese. LOL...without a ruler to get the 3cm cube which is a serving size. Now weigh it. Is it 30 grams?

3. Continue the game with other foods in your kitchen and then comment below on any surprises you got when using your scale :)

NEXT WEEK'S BLOG: My Time

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DISCLAIMER: Whenever I use the word DIET in my blog posts I am in no way suggesting that I have invented/discovered some miracle system to lose weight. Whenever I use the word DIET, I am simply substituting a single word to replace the longer phrase EATING HEALTHIER THAN IN THE PAST.