It isn’t until you seriously start looking at carbohydrates and portion sizes that you notice it is TOUGH to measure some things even at home! (I won’t even get into going out just yet.)
Take grapes as an example. We have a book on carb counting handy. When you look up grapes you get a couple of main groups: American, and European.
Which one would you pick? If you picked American you’d be wrong in our house. American grapes are slip-skin, which means that you usually slide the thick skin off and eat the inside. European grapes are the green or red variety you commonly find in grocery stores or restaurants around here.
So now you know you have European grapes. How many carbs are in a given portion size? The book says it’s 28 in a cup, or a certain amount by weight. We don’t have a scale yet so the weight measurement is out. The volume measurement seems bad to me because there could be a huge variance in the amount in a cup based on their size or shape. From 20-50 percent of that cup could be nothing but air. What to do?
I went online and found that the ADA says that there are 9 carbs in 10 green or red European grapes. OK… but what size are the grapes? It doesn’t say.
I ended up measuring out “a cup” of grapes and compared the number of grapes in that against the carbs listed on the ADA web site. Things appeared to work out alright. I went with the 9 carbs in 10 grapes formula and kept a count of what Shealyn ate. That was easy! She’ll eat as many grapes as I give her.
We’ve done this work for Jack before so it didn’t come as much of a surprise. However, he usually does all of his own counting and I know he has to fudge it some. Jack has had decades to learn how to do that. We’re amateurs! I think we’ll eventually need a scale to get this right.
- Louie
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