Lately I have been really trying hard, and mostly succeeding, in tracking all that i consume for the sake of analyzing my food intake because although I preach it a lot, I don't really follow the rule of 80/20 in that staying in good physical shape is 80% diet and 20% exercise. I truly believe this to be the case and most of the experts would agree with me.
Tracking your food and making correct choices isn't really that difficult with the technology that we have today but I find myself getting really angry at how the United States muddies the waters by having their odd unites of measurement that normally means I am going to have to do some sort of calculation in order to figure out what the hell I am actually taking in.
MyFitnessPal is really good for this sort of thing because over the years their database of food and their relevant nutritional information is quite extensive. However, I have to assume that most of the information was provided by the USA because almost everything has those damn units of measurement that only the United States uses as far as I know.
I have a kitchen scale and it doesn't measure by cups, or half cups, or teaspoons, or tablespoons or quarts or any of the other myriad of silly measurement notions that Americans use to weight and measure things. Attempting to convert this is possible of course, but what sort of cup are we talking here? A squished cup, a loose cup? And do I really have to make another thing in my kitchen dirty just so I can know how much mango I am eating.
It is so much easier just to pop the mango on the scale and boom! It tells me how many grams it is. Americans also love to use ounces but this is a relatively large unit of measurement when it comes to food and of course it doesn't divide fully either.
Now before anyone accuses me of American-bashing understand that I am American and have used these sorts of measurements as well as miles and also feet, for all of my life.
They are not conducive to keeping accurate measurements of how much of something I am eating though. I want to know EXACTLY how much I am consuming and I don't want to eyeball something and say to myself "well that looks like a cup, i think"
The fact that the first entry in my mango search focuses on whether or not the mango is cut into pieces or not is irritating too because what fucking difference does it make?
Also, when we talk about 1 mango as a unit of measurement that is just silly also. Look at the mangos in a shop sometime ok? They vary greatly in size. I need it in grams but now I have to do more math throughout my day just to get the job done. It's annoying as hell.
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these are all mangos so I guess all of them are 126 calories, right?
Would it really be so difficult to just use the same system that literally the rest of the world uses? (except for the silly UK and their "stone" measurement, whatever the hell that is)
I don't have a massive background in drug use but I have done some cocaine in my life and that is honestly the only thing I have heard of in the United States that is always measured in grams. I wonder why they don't use teaspoons... perhaps because they actually want to be accurate maybe?
I suppose I should just get used to the fact that this is what I am going to encounter. I have found out that if you type the name of a whole food followed by "grams" it will normally give you a non-ethnocentric version of how to measure and record your intake.
Online there is a lot of American-bashing that goes on about specifically this and it took me 40 years, but I now understand the frustration that the rest of the world has when dealing with my nation's people :)