[tejohnso]

> you need to use a food scale or something that measure the volume of food

Isn't that obvious? Basic high school science projects would have students using measuring devices. Are you saying that it's common for nutritional studies to tell people to eyeball their portions and that is then used as actual data?

I see from the article "Nutritional epidemiology studies typically ask people to keep a food diary or complete questionnaires about their intake over the past 24 hours, a week, or even several months." I find that hard to believe. How could any study like that be taken seriously? That's like having someone stand at a street corner for an hour and observe the population to then come up with an average BMI for the neighbourhood.

[pavel_lishin]

I would wager that just paying attention to, and thinking about what someone eats has a decent impact on their health - so it feels like it's working, and like your estimates are accurate.

After all - once you started doing it, you started losing weight/building muscle/achieving whatever result.

[ericjmorey]

Which is a reason why keeping a food diary is an often recommended technique for changing your diet and eating healthier.

[ellisv]

Yes, the mere act of monitoring (including self-monitoring) leads to behavioral change.

This alone can be sufficient for some people.

[jacobr1]

One factor is just the sheer volume of snacks and treats - outside of the portion size of any particular meal. If your were not self-aware of constant eating that can have a big impact - at least it did for a few friends of mine.

[disgruntledphd2]

Yup, I discovered this 14 years ago and wrote a proposal to do barcode scanning to help, but left academia soon after.