EatSmart Nutrition Scale, an old-fashioned dieter’s new best friend

It’s often the little things in life that make me happy. For instance, with all the expensive toys and bikes that I own, one of my very favorite possessions is my heated mattress pad.

Along the same lines, one of the things that regularly frustrated me was my kitchen scale. It wasn’t annoying enough to motivate me to actual action, but it was one of those nagging frustrations, and every time I used it, I made a mental note to replace it.

It’s not that the scale was that bad; it just wasn’t very good. It was an old-school spring loaded beastie that constantly had me questioning its accuracy; consecutive weighings produced wildly different numbers, and trying to “zero” it (or “tare,” as I now know that function is properly called) was counter-intuitive and subject to the same accuracy concerns.

I’d been annoyed by the scale pretty much as long as I’ve had this blog (it didn’t matter before I started using it for dieting!), so when a guy by the name of William Geronimo wrote to me and offered to let me review a new “nutritional scale,” you can bet I jumped at the chance.

I’d heard of nutritional scales before and knew the general premise (it has a built-in database and tells you the nutritional content of the food you weigh) but had never played with one. When the EatSmart Nutritional Scale arrived, I spent quite a bit of time testing out different foods, entering in their codes, and comparing the results to other calorie data (it looks like most everyone uses the USDA database as a starting point).

As it turns out, after several weeks of using the scale, it’s not the food database that I’ve found most helpful, but the general ability to get accurate information easily with just one tool. First, the scale itself seems to be very accurate in that it produces repeatable results and makes it easy to tare (compensate for the weight of the container).

Beyond the accuracy of the scale itself and the nutritional database, it also has several features I find particularly helpful. First, it’s dead easy to switch between grams and ounces. This is great because most foods’ nutritional label show the serving sizes in grams, but for things like beverages, ounces are more common.

Second, it has a built-in calculator feature where you can put in the serving size (as determined by the nutritional label) and then the nutritional label value of the nutrient or measurement you want to know. For instance, if I have a can of apricots, I enter 122 as the serving size (that’s what’s listed on the label, in grams) and then enter 60 (the number of calories in an official serving). If my serving is more or less than 122 grams, the scale tells me how many calories are in my actual serving. This is immensely helpful for the real world where we don’t always follow the exact serving size.

Now in both cases, you could use your computer to do the same thing. A quick Google calculation will convert grams to ounces and vice versa. A basic calculator can help you adjust your numbers for a different-sized serving. But the beauty of it is that you don’t have to use yet another tool; it’s all built in! One of my biggest dieting complaints is that there are so many steps, so many things to keep track of. This scale is both helping me get better information, and it’s simplifying my dieting process. I’m a big fan!