dannyman.toldme.com

How Many Calories in a Bowl of Cereal?

I started trying to use Fitbit to track calorie consumption again the other day. This gets frustrating pretty fast because unless you only eat processed food from packages of specific size you mostly have to accept that calorie counting is a wildly inaccurate guessing game.

I’m happy to embrace the mystery and accept approximate measurements for the most part, but I figured there was one thing I could tackle: breakfast! The most important meal of the day … and I tend to eat the same thing: a bowl of Trader Joe’s Raisin Bran with skim milk. (Trader Joe’s is the only raisin bran I can find any more where the raisins aren’t coated in sugar.)

In theory, this is trivial to figure out. The information is posted right on the side of the box:

So, how many calories am I eating, here?

Caveat: I eat cereal by the bowl, not by the cup! I also eat with some quantity of skim milk.

I whipped out my trusty digtal kitchen scale:
1) Switch scale back to metric
2) Place bowl on scale
3) TARE
4) Pour a bowl of cereal, note weight (129g)
5) TARE
6) Pour milk, note weight (331g)
7) Remove bowl from scale and enjoy breakfast before everything goes soggy

Cereal calories are easy to figure: 129/55 * 170 = 399 calories
Milk servings are measured in ml, though. The moment I started trying to look up the volume of a gram of milk, Google just gave me the answer: 113 calories

So, my regular breakfast clocks in at 512 calories. Mainly, I just wanted to sing the praises of my trusty digital kitchen scale.

UPDATE: Friends advise use of http://www.myfitnesspal.com/, which allegedly has a better database. It looks like I can “save” a favorite meal consisting of:

• 2.35 servings of Trader Joe’s Raising Bran
• 1.26 servings of Sprouts – Fat Free Milk

myfitnesspal: saving a measured breakfast.