Cool feature on my Salter scale

[dianas]

Hello everybody,

I've been using a salter scale with a food data base built in. I love it for being able to get precise carb counts as I'm preparing/eating as I dose my insulin based on carb counts.

Anyway I've always had trouble with the good old casseroles that serve the whole family. I mean sure I can say a recipe serves however many I want it to and get close approximations but then when it came time to dish up it's another story. You know is that finished casserole 8 cups or 9 cups? I'd try weighing the whole thing but they usually weigh more than the scale will take. But the Salter has a memory feature for recipes which I finally figured out tonight. So now my scale can figure out the nutritional info based on weight I dish up. So now I can weigh my shepherd's pie and know how much I'm eating. Even with batch to batch variations in cooking this will probably be more accurate than the previous options. How cool is that?

Diana

[Lost Dog]

That is pretty cool.

How long does it keep collecting? If you start the recipe and work on it over hours, does it keep going?

[spb]

which one do you have, i would like one like that

[dianas]

Originally Posted by Lost Dog

That is pretty cool.

How long does it keep collecting? If you start the recipe and work on it over hours, does it keep going?

The scale will time out eventually so no I don't think it'll do that. I try to pre-chop things/prepare/gather items so that I can weigh on a roll so to speak.

The scale will let you manually input a weight also after the fact. Ie so if you ate at a restaurant you can enter the food and put in an estimated weight later and you can input your daily intake into the memory. I've never done that before either until now. I had weighed everything as I prepared it but actually didn't sit down and figure it out how to use the "later" or recipe stuff till later.

The only drawback I can see to using this is it'll be taking ingredients/precooked weights but the final dish will probably be different after cooking. Some things that won't matter some it will. Still even then I think it'll be more accurate than a measuring cup or trying to divide up the casserole evenly. And I don't see how the cooked weight could ever be higher than the raw ingredients anyway so if it's off it'll be towards more weight loss.

Diana

[Aoife]

Is it accounting for waterloss in your cooking? I mean if you weigh previous to cooking, and post cooking, you'll either gain or lose weight based on cook method (wet: water gain, dry: water loss).

[dianas]

Originally Posted by spb

which one do you have, i would like one like that

Salter 1450. It retails for around $100 so it's not cheap. If all I was tracking was calories though I would never have spent that much on a scale. When you're looking at 1500 calories total daily you've got more room for error so to speak before you blow your deficit cause you're dealing in larger amounts and also you're looking at totals throughout the day and so can make adjustments as you go along. But I take 1 unit of insulin for every 3 grams of carb in the morning and 1:10 the rest of the day. That needs to happen everytime I eat and it's just not practical to be running to the computer or the Calorie King book every meal or snack to get precise carb counts. I'm pretty good at guessing carbs but still being off by even 5 or 10 grams of carb can make a difference in blood sugars. That's the main reason I love and use the Salter.

You can add up to 100 of your own foods or recipes into the scale. You can also track totals for up to 2 different people I believe so it will sort of double as a food log but a very rudimentary one.

If anyone does decide to get one watch for Bed Bath and Beyond or similiar store coupons to cut down the cost.

Originally Posted by Aoife

Is it accounting for waterloss in your cooking? I mean if you weigh previous to cooking, and post cooking, you'll either gain or lose weight based on cook method (wet: water gain, dry: water loss).

Originally Posted by dianas

The only drawback I can see to using this is it'll be taking ingredients/precooked weights but the final dish will probably be different after cooking. Some things that won't matter some it will.

Diana

No I don't see how the scale can accomodate pre and post cooked weight changes which I'm taking into account. At least in this recipe some of the ingredients are cooked already like the ground beef and the mashed potatoes so using those measures would be more accurate than raw weights. It's still going to be a ballpark estimate I just think with some things its going to be a lot better than trying to weigh large batch cooking on a canning scale or trying to estimate how many total cups your recipe made.

The scale supposedly can measure liquid ingredients also and convert to fluid ounces. I hardly ever use that feature so I don't know how well it works. The only thing I've tried it on is canola oil and pancake syrup. Worked well for those though. But will it work on a recipe where you input 1 cup of uncooked rice and 2 cups of chicken broth and be close enough to get an accurate nutrition analysis of the cooked rice? I have absolutely no idea. But next time I do rice I'll measure it both ways and compare it. I'm also curious to see what it'll do with a baking recipe.

Diana