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Your personal nutritionist

By Mary Hartley, RD
Director of Nutrition

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Determining accurate food servings is an important part of keeping calorie counts. You have three ways to tell the exact size of the portion you eat. You can:

1. use a food scale to measure your food
2. compare your food to an object of known size
3. use weight information on the package, adjusted for your serving

The food scale is the most accurate method, but it can be intrusive. Props are commonly used to visually estimate food measurements. For instance, a 3-ounce serving of meat is the size of a deck of cards. To use the weight on the package to estimate meat portions, note that 4-ounces of raw meat becomes a 3-ounce serving after it is cooked.