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Logging food
What a slice, a spoon and a handful actually weigh — and which foods are worth weighing at all.
Most food doesn't need a scale. A slice of sandwich bread is about 32–38 g, a teaspoon of honey about 7 g, a handful of nuts about 30 g. The foods where weighing genuinely pays are the calorie-dense ones — oil, butter, nuts, cheese, peanut butter — because a small error there is a large number of calories.
Open most tracking apps, scan a loaf of bread, and they will ask you how many grams you ate. Nobody eats grams of bread. They eat two slices.
That gap is why people give up on tracking in the second week. Every meal becomes an arithmetic problem, and the app's default answer — 100 g — is almost never right. 100 g of bread is roughly three slices. 100 g of peanut butter is six tablespoons and more than 600 calories. 100 g of cashews is 600 calories and nobody's snack.
The fix isn't more precision. It's counting the thing in front of you.
These are typical weights for the foods people log most. Use them as a starting point and adjust if your product states otherwise — a pack that says "800 g, 20 slices" is telling you a slice is exactly 40 g.
| Item | Typical weight | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sandwich bread, thin cut | 20–25 g | 4–5 slices to reach 100 g |
| Sandwich bread, medium | 30–35 g | The usual supermarket loaf |
| White bread, standard slice | ~38 g | Commercially produced |
| Wholemeal, standard slice | ~32 g | Denser crumb, lighter slice |
| Thick cut / toastie | 40–45 g | 2–3 slices to reach 100 g |
| Sourdough, rye, seeded | up to 55 g | Dense breads weigh most |
| Bread roll or bap | ~60 g | Burger buns similar |
| Bagel | ~85 g | Often two portions of bread |
| Item | Typical weight | Calories |
|---|---|---|
| Teaspoon of honey | ~7 g | ~21 kcal |
| Tablespoon of olive oil | ~14 g | ~120 kcal |
| Tablespoon of peanut butter | ~16 g | ~95 kcal |
| Teaspoon of butter | ~5 g | ~36 kcal |
| Tablespoon of sugar | ~12 g | ~48 kcal |
| Item | Typical weight |
|---|---|
| Medium egg | ~55 g |
| Cheese slice (from a 400 g / 20-slice pack) | 20 g |
| Digestive biscuit | ~15 g |
| Samosa | ~50 g |
| Sausage (from a 400 g pack of six) | ~65 g |
| Roti / chapati | ~40 g |
| Idli | ~40 g |
| Handful of nuts | ~30 g |
| Medium banana | ~118 g peeled |
The most accurate portion figure isn't on a website — it's on the packet. A pack that reads 400 g (20 slices) has told you a slice is 20 g exactly, for that product, in that factory. An 800 g loaf marked 18 slices is 44 g a slice.
Divide the pack weight by the count and you have a number better than any average. It takes five seconds and it's right for the food actually in your kitchen.
Precision has a cost, and it should be spent where it changes the answer.
Worth weighing: oil, butter, nuts, nut butter, cheese, granola, dried fruit. These are dense, and the difference between a "tablespoon" and a generous tablespoon of olive oil is 60 calories. Do this for a week and you'll learn what your own spoon looks like.
Not worth weighing: bread, eggs, fruit, vegetables, packaged snacks, anything sold in countable pieces. Count them. A 10% error on a 90-calorie slice of bread is nine calories, which is noise.
Never worth weighing: a restaurant meal. You can't, so don't pretend to. Estimate it, log it, move on — a logged estimate beats an unlogged meal every time.
Scan a pack and the app works out what one of it is. Cheese singles that say "400 g (20 slices)" open at 1 slice, 20 g. A sliced loaf opens at one slice. Honey opens at a teaspoon. Tablets open at one tablet, not a hundred grams of them.
Where the manufacturer states a weight, that number is used. Where it doesn't, a typical weight is shown with a ≈ so you can see it's an estimate and change it. The grams box stays there for anything you do want to weigh — it just isn't the only way in any more.
And because foods that genuinely have no single unit — flour, mince, rice, grated cheese — are recognised as such, you're never asked to count something uncountable.
About three medium slices, four to five thin slices, or two to three thick-cut. Check the pack: weight divided by slice count is exact.
For most foods, yes — and a sustainable rough estimate beats a precise habit you abandon. Weigh the calorie-dense things for a fortnight to calibrate your eye, then stop.
An adult handful of nuts is roughly 30 g — around 180–200 calories for cashews or almonds. Handfuls vary with hand size, which is exactly why nuts are on the "worth weighing" list.
Try NutriMacro free — scan a pack, log a slice, get on with your day. Or read how to log food accurately next.
