Do you all use a food scale? If so, what foods do you weigh? Has it been useful to you? Worth buying? What brands would you recommend? Are there particular features I should look for?

Wow, that was a lot of questions!

Thanks for your help!!

Well. I have one someplace. I got one at WW years ago.
I do calorie counting and I just go by serving size.

I have one that my grandma gave to me from when she did Weight Watchers. I use it to measure meat and anything else that is counted by weight. I am really glad I have it and use it a few times a week. It isn't fancy by any means!

I LOVE my Krups - it has a flat plate and a big bowl for measuring and weighing, and can be changed at the touch of a button between g/Kg and l/ml. One great feature is that I can use a regular dinner plate on it, and weigh the food right onto that. It is digital, accurate, virtually indestructible, and I have had it for about four years on the same battery. I've been using it almost every day since March; if it died, I would hunt the world to find exactly the same one

Heather

I love my food scale. I use it daily if not several times a day. I make full recipes of things, total up the calories and them am able to divide it into exact portions I want instead of guessing. I weight my fish, chicken, cheeses, even veggies to get a rough estimate. I weigh servings of sauces, dips, margarines.. etc.

This is the one I got.. I had a 20% off coupon so it was very reasonable. http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/prod...1&SKU=13970270

I use to have one that went up to 5 pounds, but when portioning out really big recipes, sometimes it wasn't enough. The one I have now iss 11 and its fine. I like the flat top on it so I can put bowls/plates etc on top. Always make sure you havea spare battery because sometiesm it can get a low battery JUST when you really need it. I like being able to weigh in grams as well as ounces to be even more exact if needed. The metal top is also a lot easier to keep clean that a plastic one, IMHO

I have a Salter digital food scale and I couldn't live without it. I use it almost every time I prepare a meal. I guesstimate volume on veggies and measure my fats with measuring spoons, but I weigh almost everything else--meat, cheese, nuts, fruit, pasta, rice and the like.

Salter is a good brand. I've had mine for about 3 years and haven't had a problem with it--despite submerging it in water a few times. Mine goes in 1/8 oz increments, which is good, and if I need more sensitivity, or am dealing with smaller weights, I hit the button to switch over to metric and weigh in grams. Also, I don't know whether this is a regular scale feature, or if I just got lucky, but you can put a bowl on my scale and then zero it out, add food to the bowl and zero it out, and then add more food and zero it out. It's a very handy feature.

I have a digital postal scale that I bought to use for my ebay selling.
It does .1 oz. up to 50 pounds. It has the flat surface to put a plate. And then I can zero it out.

For some things I measure in cups, tbls etc.

I bought some 1 cup plastic rubber maid containers, then Alls I have to do is pour cereal, etc right into the dish I eat from.
I also have some 2 cup containers that I use for veggies, or large volume foods.
My scale can do grams/oz.
It was less than $20 on ebay.

I also have the old fashioned scale. that does not use electricity or batteries, just in case there is a power outage.

I am not a calorie counter but I weigh EVERYTHING pretty much for Weight Watcher points values. I have two scales, one smaller and plastic with a plastic weighing dish, one more industrial that can take a higher weight (I use it sometimes to weigh packages for eBay!).

To me having a scale is just something that I can't be without. Like a blender. Or an espresso machine. Or a steamer. I am also a whole-fooder so almost everything I eat I make myself, so I need to know the weights and measurements to get the points. Sometimes I even weigh my fruit and veg just to make sure I'm getting it all in

Yes--it's so much easier to weigh food rather than measure it, and it's probably more accurate.

I have to recommend Terraillon. The have FANTASTIC customer service. I bought a Terraillon scale about 15 years ago. I've moved twice since then, and although the scale was still working, I'd lost the battery compartment covers. So, I E-mailed Terraillon to see if I could purchase battery compartment covers. They no longer sold my model, but get this: They sent me a totally new scale FREE of charge (they didn't even charge me for shipping). I was so impressed by that! Here's the best part, though: When I got the scale, I weighed something on the new scale and the old scale because I wanted to see how accurate the old scale was. It registered the exact same weight as the new scale---after 15 years!

Whatever scale you get, be sure that it has the TARE function. This function allows you to keep zeroing out the weight and adding things. For example, I can put my bowl on the scale and turn it on, and it registers zero (it automatically registers zero when you turn the scale on w/ something on it). Then, I can add my cereal to see how much it weighs. Then, let's say I want a banana. I just press a button, and the scale reverts to zero again, so I can weigh my banana as I'm slicing it into the bowl. I think most good scales have this feature now.

I also have a Salter digital scale. It's so versatile bc not only do i use it several times daily for weighing my food, but it also functions very well as a postal scale..and if you love to cook like me, its also handy to have for the British cookbooks (Nigella Lawson 's books that are sent to Canada have the british weights.)
Yes 'tare' is critical..I think most digital scales have this now, though?? I use 'tare' function daily too. I don't care how much my bowl weighs

I use a scale for things that don't measure perfectly. Like a cup of sliced/chopped fruit, for example. There's a lot of space in between bits, so weighing is more critical. 100 grams is 100 grams, any way you slice it.

I have a digital scale and I use it to weigh everything...yogurt, cereal, milk in my cereal, veggies, meat, peanut butter, hummus...you name it, I weigh it. I hardly bother measuring anything anymore. I'm at the point where I wish recipes would give amounts in weight rather than volume, especially for ingredients like veggies and fruits.

One advantage to the scale is that I have fewer measuring utensils to wash. For example, before I had the scale, I had to measure my cereal and my milk in a measuring cup, then dump them into a bowl to eat. Now I just weigh everything in the bowl that I will eat it out of. One less thing to wash and it's far more accurate (I can't fudge the weight of the cereal the way I could fudge the volume in the measuring cup). If I'm making a PB&J, I put a slice bread on the scale, zero it out, and then weigh the PB and the jelly right on the slice of bread. So much easier than trying to measure out a tablespoon of peanut butter and I don't have to wash the tablespoon.

Here is my advice:

• Go digital. Analog food scales just aren't as easy to use.
• Make sure the scale has a wide, stable base. You want to be able to put a dinner plate, frying pan, or saucepan on it.
• Make sure it has a function that allows you to easily reset the scale to zero with something already sitting on it (the TARE function someone mentioned earlier).
• If you live in the US, make sure you get a scale that measures both grams and ounces. On the other hand, I haven't found MLs to be necessary--but I'm sure they would be outside the US.
• Make sure it can handle up to five pounds. More would be better.
• Don't cheap out on it. My first scale was a cheapo $5 analog job and I hated it. It tipped over all the time, spilling food all over the place, and it was hard to read. I also had to use the tiny square container that came with it (note, square containers are hard to wash--food gets stuck in the corners), I couldn't use my own bowl with it. I use my scale at every meal and almost every snack; it's a worthwhile investment.

The scale I use now is Salter Model 1015 WHSSDR. I'm very happy with it. The only feature I wish it had was the ability to store the weight of the bowls and pans I use most often--but I haven't seen this feature on any scales.

I had been using a crappy old scale that I had dropped more than once and I didn't quite trust.... after reading this post I was inspired to head over to Linens N' Things today and I found a really nice Salter scale that was 29.99. I had a $20 giftcard PLUS apparently there was a coupon that took 6 bucks off soooo all in all, it was $6.06! I was so happy! It has that great set to zero function and holds up to 7 lbs... I love it already! Thanks for the suggestions

You guys convinced me that a food scale was a good idea, so while I was at Target yesterday I picked one up. I'm already addicted to it! I love seeing EXACTLY how much I'm eating, and I'm surprised at how off I was before in my estimates! Even though I was usually measuring things, measuring cups can be pretty inaccurate. For example, how big is a cup of frozen strawberries? Depending on how big the strawberries are, that can vary a LOT. And since they don't make a 1/2 Tablespoon measure, my estimate of 1/2 T of mayonnaise is always just guesswork. But now I can see exactly what I'm putting on that sandwich! It's already been very helpful with those things it's hard to measure.

Thanks for the recommendations!

I have a Salter analog scale that I love. It's one of the old fashioned dial kind. We registered for it when we got married. I have several baking recipes from the UK and they weigh everything versus measuring.

I don't weigh too much except to gauge fruit size and fish portions. I did use it last week to weigh chips though (they were brought in the house for someone else.) Who knew a 1 oz portion was that small?!?! It made me view those chips as a waste of calories; I only ate them that one time (DH ate the rest.)

Kilketay~ 1/2 a Tablespoon equals 1 1/2 teaspoons (just in case you are ever without your scale, but you have measuring spoons.)