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About Diet Food Scales

Diet food scales are a tool that dieters can use to stick to their healthy eating plans. Food scales are used primarily to weigh portions, so that dieters can follow the recommended amounts for the diet they are following. Newer models of diet food scales not only weigh food, but also provide nutritional information as well.

  1. Types

    • You can find numerous brands of diet food scales at nutritional product retailers, department stores and home goods sellers. Examples of popular diet food scales are the EatSmart Food Scale, Salter Digital Kitchen Scale, NutriScale Kitchen Scale and VitaMinder Food Scale. You can compare prices and models online through a shopping comparison site such as nextag.com.

    Scale Usage

    • Diet food scales are used to measure out the correct portion size of each entrée. Many diet scales will provide the weight of the food placed on the scale in either grams or ounces. For example, if your diet recommends you consume a 5-oz. piece of grilled chicken for dinner, you can place the chicken on the scale to determine if you are sticking to the portion recommendations.

    Nutritional Data

    • Newer models of diet food scales can collect nutritional information about the food you are consuming. For example, the EatSmart scale allows you to put in a 3-digit code to analyze the food on the scale. Your scale manual will provide the codes you need to use. The diet food scale will display the number of calories, carbohydrates and fat grams in the particular food item. You can see additional data for the food item, such as protein, calcium, sodium and cholesterol amounts.

    Considerations

    • Not all foods will be programmed into a diet scale to give nutritional data. However, some models will allow you to enter in the nutritional label information and then adjust the number based on the amount of food that you placed on the scale. The Salter food scale allows you to save the foods that you program into the scale's internal memory.

    Warning

    • Clean and sanitize your diet food scale after every use to prevent food-borne illness. This is especially important if you weigh raw meats, such as chicken, turkey and fish.

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