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Welcome to My Weigh Station
See that apple? That’s 38.42 carbs. Exactly. I know, ’cause I’ve got my own Weigh Station nowadays. Bully for me! I can eat fruit again 
So the honest truth is, despite suggesting the tactic to others who are newly diagnosed, I personally bypassed the initial food-weighing phase altogether. The idea, of course, is to weigh and measure your food carefully for a while, until you get very familiar with what’s what. Then you can move on to the eyeballing and hand-comparison stages. Due to a combination of laziness and self-assurance, I figured I could skip right on through to Easy Street. Things went pretty well for the past several years, actually. But as you might know by now, my honeymoon is over! All this guesstimating just ain’t precise enough for my ever-tighter insulin-to-carb ratios. Know what I mean?
So for just about $70, I’ve got a nifty new kitchen gadget, and some assurance that my carb-counting has a reasonable degree of accuracy. The Salter model that I chose includes a database of over 900 foods, including ketchup, breaded shrimp, and shelled almonds. You look up the code and plug it in, and can immediately see the carb count, fiber content, salt and fat content of each food. Cool! The only thing I’m not too clear on is how to weigh the loose stuff, like the ketchup, or pasta or soup, without including the weight of the bowl or container. Plus I have to be disciplined enough to take the time to weigh each food and then add up the total carbs — which sounds simple, but can be a bit of a challenge when you’re very hungry, or in a hurry, or both (usually the case for me).
Ah, and the other challenge is convincing my 7-yr-old that there’s no code for her signature salami-and-strawberry-jam sandwich. How she loves to weigh her kiwis, though… Welcome to my Weigh Station. Now get out of my way!
Explore posts in the same categories: Diabetes Essentials, Food
Hi Amy,
Good choice. I have the exact same model of food scale, and I have been very happy with it. To weigh loose things with factoring in the weight of the bowl you just press the “zero” button after you put the bowl on. Or if you turn on the scale with the bowl already on there, it won’t count the weight of the bowl. You can “zero” as many times as you want, so you can weigh your pasta on a plate, press zero, add some tomato sauce, press zero, and then add whatever else…a dinner roll or something. I think there’s also a way to get the scale to add up multiple food items like this, but I’ve not used that feature. These days, since I’ve become quite comfortable with carb counting, I just use the scale for fruit (bananas especially I find hard to judge) and for portions of rice, pasta, etc.
Posted by: Jana | November 8th, 2006 at 7:29 amI have this model too and I love it! Jana is right, use the zero feature with each ingredient and then add up all the carbs!
Posted by: George | November 8th, 2006 at 10:01 amHa! I can top the gross sandwich combo. My son LOVES pepperoni, butter, American cheese and peanut butter on a bagel. Disgusting!!!
Posted by: Annie | November 8th, 2006 at 12:57 pmOMG – those are some gross sounding sandwiches man!!
How do you like the food database? Have you encountered a food that wasn’t in the database?
Posted by: Scott K. Johnson | November 8th, 2006 at 2:57 pmSo, are you relying strictly upon the scale’s codes? I used to use “carbohydrate factor” numbers. For example I think bananas are 0.23 carbs per each gram.
If you are using carb factors, have you found any good sources? I only found partial sources and that was furstrating. I know cooked brocoli has a way different factor than raw brocoli, and yet I would only find one value.
I must say that I still have scraps of paper in the kitchen so I can write out 220 gram * 0.23 = 50.6 / Ins-carb ratio = N units of insulin. Too many digits to do entirely in my head.
Posted by: Brian Leair | November 8th, 2006 at 7:16 pmA good recourse is to use the USDA’s free food search program (you can download versions to your PC’s desktop or to your PDA) from there you can figure carb factors for just about any food by finding how many carbs are in 1g of that food. I use this in combo with a $4 mini food scale.
Posted by: Michelle | November 11th, 2006 at 12:29 pmI find this site really useful for finding the nutritional values of all foods, both raw and cooked (even has different values for different cooking methods):
http://www.nutritiondata.com/
PS If you use firefox you can also add a plugin, which you can find on their website, that adds a search engine. Instead of having a google search box next to your address bar, you can have an ND box: just type in the food and it will take you (almost) straight to a page with that food’s nutritional info.
Posted by: Adam Price | November 12th, 2006 at 1:32 pmDo you know where can i get this product?
Posted by: Juanita Hernandez | April 12th, 2007 at 7:31 amPLEASE! Where can I buy this scale? Weigh Station. I can’t find anything online. Thanks!
Posted by: Nancy Pennington | December 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am