Smart food scales

I haven't used smart food scales, but I would assume you still need to somehow specify what you are weighing in an app. When I last looked at this a couple of years ago, the smart bit was that scales could send the weight measurement to the companion app. At the time, I decided that I might as well use standard kitchen scales and invest in a nutrition tracking app that meets my needs. Yes, I need to enter the weight manually, but it only takes seconds. It still works well. I use basic Salter digital scales from Argos and pay Cronometer subscription for tracking my nutrition, fasting, and easily interface with Fitbit data.

I have some Salter smart scales that talk to an app via Bluetooth, but I never use the app and tbh I rarely use those scales (instead preferring a non-smart Salter set) as the additional time to switch them on, open the app, get a connection, etc., is a faff.

I look at the back of the packet, do the calc in my head (or for meals/receipes with multiple components write them down on a bit of paper - which is useful when you don't know how much of the total you will eat vs other people). much quicker than selecting the correct item in the app, etc.

The difficulty with apps (or any sort of list) is if it doesn't have exactly the thing you're eating then you end up spending time looking for some equivalent with roughly the right carbs. For things like potatoes and pasta where the listed information is generally annoying (cooked vs uncooked, different types of cooking, etc) I generally go by eye anyway (as I split bolus so can correct later)

I bought the smart scales to talk to an app which is on my neverending todo list, hopefully I'll get round to writing it one day!

msav1066 said:

There are a number of smart scales which not only weigh your food but also calculate nutritional information including carbohydrates. Do you use such scales? Which one do you use?and how do you find them?

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I bought one made by Arboleaf from Amazon last November. I didn't own a kitchen scale and liked the idea of using the app that comes with it to calculate calories (and later, carbs). It cost around £23 at the time - I see the price has gone up since then. I bought that one because it was the cheapest.

It's accurate and it works, and has most of the same functionality as a standard scale used with an app like MyFitnessPal (or similar). Unfortunately, getting it setup is a pain as the built-in food database is full of inaccurate junk entries. If you want to weigh an orange for example, and use the built-in food database, you'll have to find the entry for 'orange' that most closely matches the nutritional information from the Tesco site (or similar). Part of the problem seems to be that it doesn't distinguish between US figures (where carbs include fibre and 'net' carbs) and those applicable in the UK. You end up having to create a custom food entry for everything you want to weigh and enter the nutritional information yourself to be sure that you're getting accurate numbers in the app. With that done, it's handy enough to use. In the end I only used it regularly for about six weeks though. I use it rarely these days - if I want to figure out the carbs in a portion of berries for example if I'm doing some blood glucose experiment or whatever.

For someone in the US there are better scales out there that apparently have the common US food products in the database and which allow you to scan the barcode on a food product before weighing rather than searching and selecting from a menu. Something like that might be worth buying, though I'm not aware of a scale that works that well for UK products. Otherwise, if you already own a scale, I'd say stick with that and use the free version of a good food tracking app with a good food database and it will save you some money and hassle. If you have to spend a lot of time selecting the right food from the database (or creating it yourself) the time saved by not having to manually enter the weight into the app would only be of significant benefit if you were to use the scale regularly for a long time.