Best Food Scales for Macro Tracking (2026)

If you're tracking macros seriously, a food scale is non-negotiable. Measuring cups are notoriously inaccurate — a "cup" of peanut butter can vary by 30–50 calories depending on how you pack it. A gram-accurate scale eliminates that variance entirely and is the single highest-leverage tool for hitting protein and calorie targets.

We compared nine of the most-recommended food scales for macro tracking — across price tiers and feature sets — on the five things that actually matter for logging: resolution, capacity, tare, power source, and app connectivity. The comparison table is right below, with a named winner for each use case; the buyer's guide, per-pick notes, and FAQ follow.

The Amazon links in this post are affiliate links — as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Prices fluctuate; check the listing for the current number. Nothing here is sponsored, and no brand paid for placement. See our affiliate disclosure for details.

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Comparison Table: Best Food Scales for Macro Tracking (2026)

Every scale here has a tare button — the "best tare function" pick wins on the workflow around it, not on having one. "Resolution" is the smallest weight change the display registers, not a lab-verified error margin. Prices and capacities vary ±10% by model revision and retailer; the Amazon link shows the live number.

The Winner for Each Use Case

• Best overall — Escali Primo (~$25). 1 g, 11 lb, instant tare, batteries that last years. Nothing to learn, nothing to charge.
• Best budget — Nicewell Food Scale (~$16). The most scale per dollar, and the only sub-$20 pick with a 22 lb capacity.
• Best precision — American Weigh LB-3000 (~$20). 0.1 g resolution, which is the only way to weigh oils, nut butters, and powders honestly.
• Best tare function — Greater Goods Nourish Nutrition Scale (~$25). Tare, weigh, save, add the next ingredient — then hit Total for the whole bowl. The only pick built around repeated tare rather than a single zero.
• Best USB-rechargeable — Etekcity Luminary 22 lb (~$26–30). USB-C charging, an IPX6-rated stainless platform, and 22 lb of capacity. No AAA drawer required.
• Best smart scale — Etekcity Luminary Smart Nutrition (~$34). The same rechargeable, waterproof hardware plus Bluetooth and a 19-nutrient readout in the VeSync app.
• Best for meal prep — OXO Good Grips (~$50). A display that pulls out from under a full sheet pan, on a stainless platform that shrugs off raw chicken.

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What to Look For in a Food Scale

Six things separate a scale you'll use daily for years from one that ends up in a drawer. In rough order of importance for macro tracking:

1. Gram resolution (not ounces). The USDA database and every major macro app — Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor — works in grams. A scale that only displays ounces, or that rounds to the nearest quarter-ounce, makes logging harder and noticeably less accurate. You want a scale that reads grams to at least 1 g resolution. (Haven't picked an app yet? See our comparison of the best food tracking apps for calorie counting.)

0.1 g resolution is worth it if you're weighing small quantities like spices, cooking oils, or pre-workout powder. At 1 g resolution, 2 g of olive oil and 3 g of olive oil look identical on the display — that's an 18-calorie swing. At 0.1 g, you can log 2.4 g accurately. Also check the minimum weight: several 1 g scales won't register anything under 2–3 g at all, which is most of a teaspoon of oil.

2. The tare function — and the workflow around it. The tare (zero reset) button lets you place a bowl on the scale, reset to zero, and weigh just the food. This is essential for practical use — you're almost never weighing food directly on the platform. Every scale on this list has tare; three things separate a good one from a frustrating one:

• Response speed. A half-second lag turns into thirty wasted seconds across a multi-ingredient meal.
• Auto-off behaviour. An aggressive auto-off that fires while you're fetching the next ingredient wipes your tare and your running total with it.
• Repeat tare. Add-and-weigh — tare, add rice, tare again, add chicken — is how you log a whole bowl without dirtying four containers. Some scales also store each ingredient and total them for you.

3. Capacity. Most macro trackers need 2 kg minimum. If you meal-prep in large batches — weighing a whole chicken, a big bowl of rice, a pot of oats — get something with at least 5 kg capacity. Resolution doesn't get worse on higher-capacity scales, so go big unless you specifically need 0.1 g precision (which almost always means a lower max weight).

4. Power source: batteries or USB-rechargeable. Most scales run on two or three AAA cells that last a year or more of daily weighing; you replace them, and the scale never stops working mid-recipe. USB-C rechargeable scales trade that for no battery hunt and, usually, a sealed body — the rechargeable picks here are IPX6-rated, so you can rinse the platform instead of wiping around the seams. The failure mode flips, though: a dead rechargeable scale means waiting for a charge rather than swapping a cell in ten seconds. Buy rechargeable if you value the waterproofing and hate battery drawers; buy AAA if you want a scale that's never unavailable.

5. App connectivity. A smart scale syncs each weight over Bluetooth to a companion app, and from there to your macro tracker. It's genuinely convenient for high-volume loggers and beginners who want one app for everything — but it's a nice-to-have, not a requirement. A $16 dumb scale plus typing the number into MyFitnessPal is just as accurate and never needs a firmware update. One thing to be clear about: no consumer food scale writes straight into MyFitnessPal. Smart scales log into their own app (VeSync for Etekcity, RENPHO Health for RENPHO), which hands off through Apple Health or Google Fit. If a seamless MyFitnessPal pipeline is the whole reason you're upgrading, check that hand-off before you buy.

6. Display readability and platform size. You read this scale multiple times per meal, so a bright, high-contrast display readable in a dim kitchen matters more than you'd think — budget LCDs often wash out at an angle. And a small platform is annoying with large plates and meal-prep containers; look for at least 6" × 6" of usable area, or a pull-out display that stays visible under a big bowl.

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What a Weighing Error Does to Your PE Ratio

The reason to own a scale isn't tidiness — it's that a food's PE ratio and satiety-per-calorie score are properties of the food, and both are only as real as the grams you attach to them. Chicken breast scores what it scores whether you weigh it or not. What a scale changes is whether the meal you built lands where you think it does.

The damage concentrates in one place: low-mass, energy-dense add-ins. Oil, nut butter, dressing, cheese. Their grams land almost entirely in the denominator of the PE ratio — protein ÷ (net carbs + fat) — so a spoon you eyeballed instead of weighing moves the ratio far more than a mis-weighed chicken breast does.

Macros are typical label and USDA values; PE ratio = protein ÷ (carbs − fiber + fat), the PE Diet Calculator formula, where 2.0 and above is the fat-loss band and below 1.0 is the red one.

Read the yogurt row carefully, because it's the one that catches people. The bowl scored 3.3 before the peanut butter went in — comfortably in the green band. One level tablespoon takes it to 1.5. The heaped spoon you'd actually serve yourself takes it to 1.0, the floor of the amber band, and adds 95 calories nobody logged. The stir-fry row does the same thing in the other direction: the food was never the problem, the unweighed oil was.

Satiety per calorie is more forgiving, and it's worth knowing why. Run that same stir-fry through the Satiety per Calorie Calculator and it scores 31.6 as logged against 26.2 as actually cooked — a 17% drop, with both versions still deep in the high-satiety band. The score normalizes to calories, so adding fat dilutes it gently. Your deficit doesn't get that courtesy: those 135 calories are gone whether the meal still feels filling or not.

Two practical consequences:

• Weigh the add-ins, not just the protein. The chicken is the easy part. The oil, the peanut butter, and the dressing are where an unweighed guess quietly costs you a band of PE ratio and a few hundred calories a day.
• This is the argument for 0.1 g resolution. A 1 g scale can't tell 2 g of oil from 3 g, and several won't read below 2 g at all. If your diet leans on small energy-dense amounts, the American Weigh LB-3000 is the cheapest fix. The background on why the ratio behaves this way is in the PE Diet guide.

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Best Overall: Escali Primo

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 11 lb / 5 kg · Power: AAA batteries · App: No · Price: ~$25

The Escali Primo has been the default recommendation for macro trackers for years, and for good reason: it's accurate, durable, has a clear high-contrast display, and costs $25. The tare function is instant, the platform is large enough for almost any plate or meal-prep container, and it runs on two AAA batteries that last for years of daily weighing.

What you give up: no app connectivity, no Bluetooth, no built-in nutrition calculator. This is a simple, reliable kitchen scale and nothing more — which is exactly what most macro trackers actually need.

Skip if: You want app sync, sub-gram resolution, or more than 5 kg of capacity — all three exist cheaper elsewhere on this list.

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Best Budget Food Scale Under $20: Nicewell Food Scale

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 22 lb / 10 kg · Power: AAA batteries · App: No · Price: ~$16

The Nicewell is the best scale you can get for under $20, and it out-specs scales that cost twice as much on the one number that surprises people: capacity. At 22 lb / 10 kg it has double the max weight of most kitchen scales, which makes it genuinely useful for weighing big meal-prep batches, not just single portions. The tempered-glass top wipes clean after raw meat or wet ingredients, the display is bright, and tare is instant.

What you give up at this price is build feel and long-term durability confidence — the glass-and-plastic body is fine but not premium, and there's no app. For pure accuracy-per-dollar, nothing on this list beats it.

Skip if: You want a platform that survives a decade of daily prep — the OXO is the buy-once version of this job.

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Cheapest That Works: Ozeri Pronto

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 11.2 lb / 5.1 kg · Power: AAA batteries · App: No · Price: ~$12

If your only goal is to stop guessing portions and you don't want to spend more than a lunch, the Ozeri Pronto does the core job: 1 g resolution, tare, a decent 5 kg capacity, and a readable backlit display for around $12. It's the scale to buy if you're not sure you'll stick with tracking and want the lowest-risk way to find out.

The tradeoffs are what you'd expect at the price: the plastic build feels cheap, the buttons are mushier than the Escali's, and the auto-off timer is aggressive enough to occasionally zero out mid-weigh. None of that affects accuracy — it affects how much you enjoy using it.

Skip if: You already know you'll be tracking in six months. Four dollars more buys the Nicewell and double the capacity.

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Best 0.1 g Precision: American Weigh Scales LB-3000

Resolution: 0.1 g · Capacity: 6.6 lb / 3 kg · Power: AAA batteries · App: No · Price: ~$20

The LB-3000 is the rare combination of high precision (0.1 g) and low price (~$20). This is the scale to get if you're weighing the small quantities that wreck a PE ratio: cooking oils, nut butters, spices, protein-powder scoops. At 1 g resolution a "small drizzle" of olive oil can be off by 20 kcal and several 1 g scales won't register it at all; at 0.1 g, that error disappears.

The limitation is capacity — 3 kg max — which is fine for plate-by-plate logging but not for weighing a whole pot of rice or a meal-prep batch. The platform is also smaller than the Escali's. Many serious trackers own this and a larger 1 g scale, using each for what it's good at.

Skip if: You mostly weigh whole proteins, grains, and vegetables in portion-sized amounts. 1 g resolution is genuinely enough there, and 3 kg of capacity will annoy you.

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Best USB-Rechargeable: Etekcity Luminary 22 lb (EKS-L221)

Resolution: 1 g (2 g minimum weight) · Capacity: 22 lb / 10 kg · Power: USB-C rechargeable · App: No · Price: ~$26–30

The rechargeable pick, and the one that makes the strongest case for the category. A single USB-C charge runs for months of ordinary use, so there's no AAA drawer to raid mid-recipe — and because the body is sealed for charging anyway, Etekcity rates it IPX6, which means you can rinse the 304 stainless platform under the tap instead of wiping carefully around a battery seam. That combination of 22 lb capacity, a metal top, and washability is unusual under $30; it lists at $29.99 and street prices sit around $26.

Two honest limits. It won't read anything under 2 g, so it's the wrong scale for weighing spices or a teaspoon of oil — that's the LB-3000's job. And rechargeable means that when it does run flat, you wait for a charge rather than swapping a cell. Worth knowing: the Bluetooth version of the same hardware (below) is only about $4 more at list, so if app sync appeals at all, compare the two before buying this one.

Skip if: You'd rather a scale never be unavailable. AAA cells take ten seconds to replace and last a year.

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Best Tare Function: Greater Goods Nourish Nutrition Scale

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 11 lb / 5 kg · Power: AAA batteries · App: No (food codes) · Price: ~$25

Every scale tares. This one is built around taring repeatedly. You zero the bowl, add an ingredient, enter its food code, and press Save; the scale stores that ingredient's weight and nutrition, re-zeros, and waits for the next one. When the bowl is full, Total gives you the calories and macros for the whole thing. For a stir-fry or an overnight-oats jar with five components, that's one container, one running total, and no arithmetic.

The database is code-based rather than connected: roughly 2,000 USDA-derived foods you look up in the included booklet or Greater Goods' free code app, plus 99 custom slots for the products you eat constantly. That's the trade — it's slower to look up a code than to search an app, but it means the scale does the whole job with no phone, no pairing, and nothing to break when an app updates.

Skip if: You already log in Cronometer or MyFitnessPal. Their databases are far larger, and you'd be paying for a nutrition feature you'd never open — buy the Escali instead.

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Best Smart Scale With an App: Etekcity Luminary Smart Nutrition Scale

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 22 lb / 10 kg · Power: USB rechargeable · App: Bluetooth (VeSync) · Price: ~$34

The best hardware-and-app combination here, and about $4 above the non-smart version of the same scale at list. You get the identical rechargeable, IPX6-rated, 22 lb stainless platform plus Bluetooth: weights land in the free VeSync app, which looks food up in the Nutritionix database and returns 19 nutrition facts per item — calories and macros, but also fiber, sodium, and the micronutrients most scale-side databases skip.

The honest caveat applies to every smart scale: the app is the product, and it's only as good as its database and how often you actually open it. Plenty of buyers use this as a plain 1 g scale and never pair it. And VeSync is its own logging environment — if your day already lives in MyFitnessPal or Cronometer, the hand-off runs through Apple Health or Google Fit rather than a direct pipeline, which is an extra step, not a seamless one.

Skip if: You're committed to an existing macro app. You'd be paying for a second food database you don't need.

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Best for Phone-First Logging: RENPHO Smart Food Scale

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 11 lb / 5 kg · Power: AAA batteries · App: Bluetooth (RENPHO Health) · Price: ~$30

The simpler smart option. Four load sensors, 1 g steps, seven units, and a Bluetooth link to the RENPHO Health app, which carries a large USDA-based food database, logs calories and macros as you weigh, and syncs onward to Apple Health. If you want a smart scale whose app you'll actually open every day, RENPHO's is the more approachable of the two — less nutrient detail than VeSync, fewer taps to log a plate.

Where it loses to the Etekcity is hardware: 11 lb instead of 22, AAA cells instead of USB-C, and a glass top rather than a sealed stainless one for roughly the same money. Choose between them on which app you'd rather live in, not on the specs.

Skip if: You're not sure you'll use app sync. Buy the Escali and save $5 — every smart scale here works as a plain 1 g scale, and that's how most owners end up using them.

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Best for Meal Prep: OXO Good Grips Stainless Steel Scale

Resolution: 1 g · Capacity: 11 lb / 5 kg (22 lb version available) · Power: AAA batteries · App: No · Price: ~$50

For batch cooking, the OXO earns its premium price on two features that matter specifically when you're weighing large containers. First, the pull-out display: the readout slides forward on a lip so you can still see the weight when a big meal-prep bowl or sheet pan is blocking the built-in screen — a genuinely useful touch no budget scale offers. Second, the stainless steel platform, which lifts off for hand-washing and wipes down instantly after raw chicken or ground beef, without staining or scratching like glass and plastic do over a year of heavy prep.

OXO makes this scale in an 11 lb and a 22 lb version; for serious batch cooking, the 22 lb model is worth the small upcharge so you can weigh a whole tray of protein at once. Is it worth twice the price of the Escali strictly for accuracy? No — the numbers are identical. You're paying for durability and the meal-prep ergonomics.

Skip if: You weigh single portions onto a plate. The pull-out display solves a problem you don't have.

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How We Compared These

We weighed the same set of reference items across these scales: a 100 g calibration weight, a single raw egg (~50 g), 5 g of olive oil, a 30 g protein-powder scoop, and a 1.2 kg meal-prep container of cooked chicken and rice. We logged read accuracy, tare response time, drift on consecutive readings, and display readability at low light and oblique angles. Every scale that reads in grams and tares cleanly hit the same accuracy on the calibration weight — which is the point: past a certain baseline, the differences between these scales are about capacity, build, power, and app connectivity, not weighing precision.

Specs in the table — resolution, capacity, power source, waterproof rating, database size — are read from each manufacturer's own current listing. Where a pick was added in a later revision of this guide, its figures come from that listing rather than from our own bench notes, and the ±10% caveat on prices and capacities applies throughout. We did not receive free product from any brand.

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What You Don't Need (Overrated Features)

On-scale nutrition databases — unless you want to skip the phone. Most built-in databases are smaller and staler than Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, or MacroFactor. They're worth paying for in exactly one case: you want the scale to do the whole job without an app, which is what the Greater Goods pick is for. If you already log in an app, don't pay extra for a second database.

Multiple unit modes. You'll use grams, occasionally milliliters for liquids, and rarely ounces. This is standard on every scale — not a differentiator.

Auto-off. Every scale has it. Whether the timer is 1 minute or 5 rarely matters — with one real exception: an over-aggressive auto-off on ultra-budget scales can zero out mid-recipe and take your tare with it.

Backlit display. Nice to have, not essential. The Escali doesn't have one and nobody complains.

Waterproofing above IPX6. Splash- and rinse-resistant is genuinely useful for a scale that meets raw chicken. Nothing beyond that matters — you're not submerging it.

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FAQ

What is the best food scale for macro tracking? For most people, the Escali Primo is the best food scale for macro tracking. It's accurate to 1 g, has an 11 lb capacity, instant tare, and costs ~$25. If you want to spend less, the Nicewell is the best scale under $20; if you need 0.1 g precision for oils and spices, the American Weigh LB-3000 is the pick.

What should I look for in a food scale? Six things, in order: gram resolution (1 g minimum, 0.1 g if you weigh oils and powders), a tare button that responds instantly and survives your auto-off timer, at least 5 kg of capacity if you meal-prep, a power source you'll tolerate (AAA cells for availability, USB-C for no battery hunt and a sealed waterproof body), app connectivity only if you'll genuinely use it, and a display you can read at an angle with a large bowl on the platform.

What's the best food scale under $20? The Nicewell Food Scale ($16) is the best sub-$20 option — 1 g resolution, tare, and an unusually high 22 lb / 10 kg capacity that most pricier scales don't match. If you want to spend even less, the Ozeri Pronto ($12) does the core job with a smaller build.

Which food scale has the best tare function? Every scale here tares; the Greater Goods Nourish Nutrition Scale is built around doing it repeatedly. Tare the bowl, weigh an ingredient, press Save, and it re-zeros for the next one, then totals the calories and macros for the whole bowl. For a plain instant tare with no workflow attached, the Escali Primo is the most responsive of the simple scales.

Are USB rechargeable food scales worth it? If you value a sealed, washable body more than guaranteed availability, yes. Rechargeable scales like the Etekcity Luminary 22 lb hold a charge for months, remove the AAA hunt entirely, and are usually IPX6-rated because the housing is sealed anyway — handy for a scale that meets raw chicken. The trade is the failure mode: a flat rechargeable scale means waiting, while AAA cells swap in ten seconds and last a year. Neither is more accurate than the other.

Which food scale syncs with MyFitnessPal? None of them do directly. Smart scales log into their own app — VeSync for Etekcity, RENPHO Health for RENPHO — and the data reaches MyFitnessPal through Apple Health or Google Fit, not through a scale-to-app link. If a frictionless MyFitnessPal pipeline is the reason you're upgrading, check that hand-off first; for most people a $16 scale plus typing the number in is faster than it sounds.

Are smart food scales worth it? For most macro trackers, no. App sync sounds useful but rarely saves meaningful time over typing a weight into your existing macro app, and the on-board databases lag behind Cronometer or MyFitnessPal. A smart scale makes sense only if you're new to tracking and want everything in one app, or if you log high enough volume that a few seconds per meal adds up. Every smart scale here also works as a plain 1 g scale if you ignore the app.

Should I weigh food in grams or ounces for macro tracking? Always grams. Every major macro app (Cronometer, MyFitnessPal, MacroFactor) and the USDA food database use metric. Ounces add a conversion step that accumulates rounding errors over time.

Do I need 0.1 g precision for tracking macros? For most foods, no — 1 g precision is accurate enough for chicken, rice, vegetables, and most proteins. 0.1 g precision helps with energy-dense, low-mass foods: cooking oils, nut butters, protein powder, spices. Those are exactly the items that swing a meal's PE ratio, so if your diet is highly optimized or you're in a cutting phase, 0.1 g is worth the small price bump.

Should I weigh food raw or cooked? Weigh raw whenever possible. Cooking shifts water weight unpredictably (a chicken breast can lose 25% of its weight in the pan), but the macro database entry for "raw chicken breast" is stable. Always weigh raw if the database entry is raw, and cooked if the entry is cooked — never mix. Full walkthrough: how to weigh cooked vs raw chicken.

How accurate are food scales compared to measuring cups? A 1 g scale is typically 5–10× more accurate than a measuring cup for solids, and 10–20× more accurate for sticky or compressible foods like peanut butter, rice, or oats. The error compounds over a full day of meals — most people who switch from cups to a scale find they were eating 200–400 kcal more than they thought.

How long do food scales last? A quality scale like the Escali or OXO should last 5–10 years with normal use. The failure point is usually the load cell (the weighing mechanism). Overloading the scale by dropping heavy items on it is the fastest way to shorten its life — set things down, don't drop them.

Should I calibrate my food scale? Most consumer food scales are factory-calibrated and can't be user-recalibrated. If your scale reads consistently but seems off (test against a known weight like a 100 g calibration weight or a sealed item with printed weight), the scale may have drifted. At that point, replace it — they're inexpensive.

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The Bottom Line

For most macro trackers, the Escali Primo is the right answer: accurate, reliable, $25, and it gets out of your way. Want to spend less, the Nicewell is the best value under $20 and doubles as a meal-prep scale. Want 0.1 g precision for oils and nut butters, the American Weigh LB-3000. Done with batteries, the Etekcity Luminary 22 lb. Weighing five ingredients into one bowl, the Greater Goods Nourish. Batch-cooking in bulk, the OXO.

The best food scale is the one you'll actually use consistently. Don't overthink it — any scale here that reads grams and tares will make your tracking dramatically more accurate than measuring cups.

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Pair Your Scale with Our Calculators

A scale tells you what's on the plate; these tools tell you what should be. Once you have accurate weights, turn them into accurate targets:

• Macro Calculator — set your daily protein, fat, and carb targets based on your goal.
• TDEE Calculator — find your maintenance calories so your macros are anchored to the right total.
• PE Diet Calculator — evaluate the protein-to-energy ratio of the foods you're weighing, using the formula in the table above.
• PE Diet Guide — why the ratio works, and how to raise it meal by meal.
• Satiety per Calorie Calculator — rank foods by how filling they are per calorie.
• Energy Density Calculator — see which foods give you the most food volume per calorie.

New to weighing food? Start with how to weigh cooked vs raw chicken and does cooking change calorie count, then pair your scale with the best food tracking apps for calorie counting.