Originally Posted by doopdoop:
Actually, I think you might be surprised. I think the difference in moisture weight after baking in the oven would be pretty huge. They may still be a bit off, but companies are allowed 20% wiggle room when it comes to the accuracy of the calorie count in their serving sizes.

I'm skeptical, but I might do an experiment---weighing a certain amount of those fries frozen, recording that number, cooking them, and then reweighing them. I'll post when I find out.

If that is how they're calculating the calories, it's pretty stupid. I mean, How on earth are we supposed to know how much to cook for one serving if we don't know the weight before we cook it? Arrgh!

Originally Posted by ringmaster:
I'm surprised the sweet potato fries were off by so much - maybe the weight on the bag was for cooked fries? I try to go by the servings on the package - but I see you mentioned the chickpeas were off by the serving size too! hmmm... I'll have to get back into weighing things more often; I used to just weigh vegetables and protein and such.

Actually, it has happened with other products I've weighed as well, but I can't think of specifically what they are off the top of my head. I will say that the majority of things I weigh seem pretty accurate, but since I've found those disparities, I always weigh my food (when possible) just in case.

I got lucky - my favorite crackers (TJs multigrain pita bite) say 8 crackers per 28g serving, but when I weigh them I get 11 for 28g! So it does go both ways - although I think your scenario is probably more common.

Interesting... and scary! I do weigh most foods, but, I will definitely have to weigh them all.the.time now!

Okay, so I did the experiment with the sweet potato fries. I randomly weighed out 5.1 oz. of frozen fries. Then, I cooked them and re-measured. Cooked, they weighed in at 3.9. So, the point about the cooked fries weighing less is true. However, I counted the number of fries, and there were only 13, and again, that's for 3.9 oz., not 3 oz. So, even if we go by the cooked weight, the number of fries is still far less than half of the "3 oz. or 30 pieces" that is listed on the package. As a side note, it really bugs me when it isn't indicated on the package whether the weight is for the cooked amount or the uncooked amount.

Originally Posted by lin43:
Okay, so I did the experiment with the sweet potato fries. I randomly weighed out 5.1 oz. of frozen fries. Then, I cooked them and re-measured. Cooked, they weighed in at 3.9. So, the point about the cooked fries weighing less is true. However, I counted the number of fries, and there were only 13, and again, that's for 3.9 oz., not 3 oz. So, even if we go by the cooked weight, the number of fries is still far less than half of the "3 oz. or 30 pieces" that is listed on the package. As a side note, it really bugs me when it isn't indicated on the package whether the weight is for the cooked amount or the uncooked amount.

That's so crazy. Now, I have to go and buy a scale. I always go by how many versus the ounce. It makes me wonder how many times I really did go over my pts when I didn't think I did in WW.

So the deal is that by law they are required to give you what a package states in weight, but the general practice is that companies generally give you more. So if a protein bar says it's 1 serving and that serving is 200 grams they only thing they are required to do is provide you with is 200 grams, generally they give you more. By that logic we'd have to weigh literally everything to be 100% acurate. It makes your head spin doesn't it. I completely agree with packaged items that have more than one serving - measure! But if it's just one serving accept that there's always going to be some margin of error and we can only do our best.

I love weighing my food because I also tend to 'over estimate' when I measure with a cup/spoon. Not to mention, a lot of times with recipes I need a certain weight of an item (mostly meats) so instead of trying to eyeball or find some rough equivalent I know I'm being accurate.

Something that bugs me about food labeling is when I buy a package of instant flavored rice (My boyfriend and I really love Near East's Sesame Ginger flavor) and it gives you a serving size that's super accurate for the dry rice & mix and then some rough approximation for how much it makes when cooked. I mean come on, it's a box mix... who makes just 1 serving and then saves the rest?! That would be like buying a cake mix, taking out a few table spoons, and making 1 slice of cake or 1 cup cake... it's just not feasible.

The thing that bugs me most about food labeling is pasta. I have to weigh it out dry and cook my own seperately from the rest of the family to get an accurate count.

Very annoying.

But I much prefer weights. They work better for my recipe analyser too.

I agree with this post. Weigh everything not in a single serve size. It is a god send if you are cooking meals for one. I weigh the stuff like rice, noodles and pasta since it easy to go over on these.

After reading this post i think i will start weighing my morning porridge, lord knows how inaccurate those cup measure thingys i use are.

It's funny, with pasta, I weigh out each serving for however many people are eating. Cook it. If it's just hubby and me, I dish it out for the 2 of us at once. I just figure roughly half and give him a little bit more than me. If it's more of us I just let everybody take their serving and then I take what's left or enough for a serving.
Otherwise, I weigh just about everything. Minus coffee. I was weighing that for a while. I actually wasn't giving myself enough LOL. Now I just eye it and know my cups.
Sometimes though I get tired of weighing OR I start to obsess so I take a break for a day or two. Then go back to it.

I measure my food as well. I was thinking of getting a digital one to improve the accuracy of my measuring.

Wow, that's a big difference. I've been measuring my food recently but I never thought about weighing my food until I discovered a scale hidden in one of our kitchen cabinets today. I felt so proud that I weighed my lunch and it made it seem that much better. I'll definitely keep it up.

Mindy: It does feel good to weigh food!! Although, I take a break from it usually once a week on my high day, just so that I don't become obsessive about it. And there are certain things I just don't weigh anymore, like coffee. I did for a while to see how much a mug is, but now I know.

Great, now I need to get a scale LOL