Review: Ozeri Touch Digital Kitchen Scale!

At first glance the Ozeri Touch Professional Digital Kitchen Scale strikes you as a tablet/iPad of some sort--elegant, sexy, sleek, light, stylish, beautifully designed, unobtrusive, and boasting an award-winning thin design. It resembles a piece of art, some high tech glossy gadget you'd want to display. 

All black with a beautiful blue LED light display this is definitely a piece of equipment you wouldn't mind showing of and having on your counter. This is one stylish and functional kitchen accessory!

You can pick between an 11 lb or 17.6 lb edition, both of which are very reasonably priced and equally beautiful. The surface is a glossy tempered black glass surface, which claims to be 4x stronger than regular glass.



As with all of the products I review, I have used this extensively to make sure it is a quality, accurate, and "worth it" product to recommend to my clients and friends. I have been tinkering around with this scale for quite some time now, using it multiple times a day, comparing it to my other scales, and testing its accuracy, precision, and durability.

The scale works beautifully and for the most part has been pretty accurate. This scale operates with 4 new high precision GFX sensors, and provides measurements from 1 gram to 5250 grams ( 0.1oz-11lbs). I do wish it worked in 0.1 or 0.5 gram increments.

Although this is not a "nutritional scale", which upon entering a code gives you the calorie count, it does come with a calorie/nutrition guide book (included in the box). The LED display is clear and bright, and unlike many other scales it works immediately and you don't have to wait for it to "power on" or set itself.

The scale only has 2 'touch screen' buttons: "on/off/tare" and 'unit' (where you change the unit of measurement), and it also runs on 2 lithium batteries which come included with the scale. You can flip through a variety of different measurements, from fl oz, grams, ounces  ml, pounds, and kilograms, and of course, it offers a tare function as well. 

As with all gadgets, there are definitely some cons that I found when using this scale, which I will list below, most of them having to do with the touch pad technology and sensitivity:

PROBLEMS:
TARE FUNCTION
This function sometimes takes a while to work or just doesn't respond. Since the whole surface is the scale, it will often just weigh your finger and the pressure you're placing on the tare function instead of zeroing the weight itself. This is fixed with patience, or turning the scale off and then on, or removing what you are trying to weigh, placing it back on the scale, and trying to tare again.

UNIT SWITCH Function
This often gets stuck and will not change to the next increment/weight measure, no matter how long you hold it or how many times you touch it. As with all 'touch pad' electronics, it is still a work in progress. In these circumstances, I end up turning the machine on and off a few times, until it allows me to change back to 'grams' or whatever unit I am in need of using. This doesn't happen often, and hasn't been a big hindrance yet.

I also wish that it weighed in 0.1g or 0.5g as opposed to 1 gram increments, although this is a minor gripe and shouldn't dissuade
 you from trying this scale at all!

The response time is generally very good (depending on how well the touch pad sensors are working) and the accuracy is usually pretty dead-on. I have tested several pre-weighed items across 4+ scales, and the reading has usually been right on, and not more than 1 gram off).

The pros to this scale definitely outweigh the negatives, although the touch pad sensors could definitely use some "tuning up" since the tare function can become rather frustrating when you are in a hurry (this may just be my scale). As a Nutrition and Supplement Consultant, the most important thing I look for in a kitchen scale is definitely accuracy, precision, ease-of-use, and functionality; this scale definitely covers most of those requirements with ease.

The added nutrition calorie counting book is a definite added bonus. This is great for everyone;  health conscious individuals, weight conscious individuals, fitness competitors, macro/micro nutrient counters, general dieters,cooks, bakers, diabetics, food lovers, to those who measure other items (works well for packages/envelopes, weighing other items, portioning, medicine and supplements etc). I recommend this for many clients concerned with getting adequate protein and micro-nutrient intake, portion control (never use "1 cup" as a measurement, always weigh it out), to those needing it to weigh out supplements, to craft people needing to make accurate mixes etc. 

I recommend the Ozeri Touch Digital Kitchen Scale wholeheartedly to anyone looking for a great and needed addition to any kitchen/lifestyle. It's a great gadget that is multi-functional, practical, easy to use, enjoyable to use and look at, and most importantly, precise and works as it should!

Review: KITRICS NUTRITIONAL SCALE

Good Morning everyone, and HAPPY EARTH DAY!

Since my last post was a bit "medical", I thought I would do a review of a wonderful product I highly recommend. I love Nutritional Scales, and have tried quite a few of them. I recently tried the Kitrics Nutritional Scale, and so far am really liking it. I deal with a lot of clients who are constantly wanting to know which products to buy, which are worth the cost, and most importantly, which will help them reach their goals.

The Kitrics Nutritional Scale is easy to use, sleek, programmable, small and looks nice on the counter. I love that it isn't bulky, and hardly takes up any room at all.

It does the following:

• Computes calories, calories from fat, carbohydrates, protein, fat, saturated fat, fiber, sugars, cholesterol, and sodium
• Includes information for 1999 foods; user can easily create and store up to 99 customizable food code entries
• Weighs in grams or ounces with accuracy of +/- 1 gram; weighs up to 72 ounces (2000 grams)
• Calculate your daily nutritional intake to help you achieve your health goals.

"Precision Scale

Weigh your food in grams or ounces, with a high-precision reading of +/- 1 gram (.05 oz.). The unit features a removable, washable stainless steel platform, and can weigh up to 72 ounces (2000 grams). Calibrate for whatever container you're using and you're all set.

 I love that you can use it directly out of the box. The programmable mode is easy to use once you get the hang of it. I love that you can customize your favorite foods, or meals, for an easy "one-touch" Nutritional read-out. This would be fantastic for any health-minded person; diabetic (it does exchanges and grams of sugar); athletes (protein, nutrients etc); anyone with Hypertension and Heart concerns (sodium, cholesterol, saturated fat); bakers (you can tare items); cooks (you can tare, program meals); dieters (reads out all macro nutrients, tallys your meal/daily Nutrition totals, and allows you to program meals and foods to track your Calorie needs). You enter your food code for a portion of food and it will compute the following: calories, calories from fat, carbohydrates, protein, fat, saturated fat, fiber, sugars, cholesterol, and sodium.

I do wish it had more "raw vegetable" program options. I have used other scales that had a lot more vegetables programmed in (cucumber with skin and without, etc). I also noticed that it only has buttered, microwave popcorn programmed in the miscellaneous section. I would have loved it to have the unpopped kernels programmed, as well as air-popped, non-buttered popcorn. However, with the programmable feature you can program this in quite easily. With foods such as CHIA seeds, Peanut Flour, Greek Yogurt, and protein powders being used regularly, this is great as you can program them right into the scale. Since more us us are moving away from more conventional junk food, towards a more whole-foods, healthier options type lifestyle, I think having a customizable readout is essential. For those of us who regularly use sugar-free products, or products made with Almond/coconut flout etc, this is a great tool to have. I tried programming GG SCANDINAVIAN BRAN CRISPBREAD, and it worked really well.

The Scale comes with a Nutritional Code book, which has the codes you enter to obtain the nutritional readout for the foods you weigh. You just enter the code, and it reads out all the information automatically. The book also has additional blank pages where you can write in your programmed custom foods/meals and their corresponding codes so you don't forget!

I was impressed with how sleek the KITRICS NUTRITIONAL scale looked on the counter. Some of the Nutritional Scales I have used cost $99 or more, and I was really impressed with the price of this product. It is accurate, works well, and has more features than most scales for half the price. This really is a great product to have in the kitchen and would make a fantastic gift as well.

A few of my Favorite Things: Xmas ideas and 5 of my Favorites

I have had a few very nice emails of readers asking me to tell them more about myself and make my site more personal. As many of you know, I started this off as a personal blog, but due to one rather derogatory comment, I stopped blogging about my life and daily happenings, and instead stuck to reviews, recipes, articles, editorials etc. I realized that one comment should affect me at all. For now, I will start a series of "A Few of My Favorite Things", which will be items (food, household, gadgets etc) that I absolutely love and cannot live with out. I figured that with Black Friday and Christmas around the corner, now would be the perfect time to recommend some items that I use regularly, stand behind and love! I, personally, appreciate when I have 'real people' feed-back, as opposed to advertising. I hope this helps and gives you guys some great ideas!

1. My Salter Mini Electronic Scale!
It is small and fits into my purse/gym bag. It is so convenient for when I am measuring out protein powder, Fibersmart, oatmeal etc. Great to take to restaurants, on vacation, to class etc. It is portable, discreet and weighs in 0.05g increments!! This is my 'baby' and I am attached to this more than I'd like to admit!

2. My Salter Nutritional Scale:

I use this daily in my kitchen, whenever I am baking/cooking. It's fun to see how off certain food counts are (packaged food serving sizes) and it is invaluable for baking, cooking or just weighing food portions. It calculates the calories as well. It weighs up to 3kg, and has tons of pre programmed foods in it. You can also program your own foods.
This is invaluable for people with Diabetes, Hypertension (tracks sodium as well!), pre-contest fitness athletes and athletes in general. This is the old-school model. They have the update which is sleeker and you can get it HERE>. It has about 1450 pre-stored Nutritional Values for foods, and you can enter about 100 of your own foods (protein powder, kabocha etc) 10yr warranty, comes with batteries, and even tracks GI loads!

3.  I ADORE and highly recommend THE NINJA Master Prep Pro. It works just like the infomercial says it does (for once they didn't exaggerate) and really chops ice into snow! High quality, fast, effective- the perfect gift for ANYONE. College student, kid, teen, family, parent's, friends etc. It has 6 blades (3 on the top and 3 on the bottom base) so it doesn't leave anything un-blended, chopped, mixed etc. It doubles as a powerful food processor, chopper and ice crusher (that really delivers results)! This truly has been one of my best purchases and I highly recommend it! It makes everything- from chicken to salad! The Master Prep Pro has 2x the speed of the original, is more powerful, chops evenly and doesn't turn your salsa into mush! The BEST GIFT!

For those of you who want a simpler easy blender only, they also have THE NINJA original (which is FANTASTIC) and blends/mixes/crushes everything!

4. Magic Bullet! or if you really want a more powerful version, try the Magic Bullet Platinum Pro!
The Platinum Pro has 100 extra Watts and they really make a difference! Food doesn't get stuck, and it works way better than the original! I realize this seems along the same vein as #3, but options are good! The cups are blender itself are MUCH sturdier than the original, and crushes ice into snow really well (unlike the old, original Magic Bullet). They also make the Bullet Express Food Processor/juicer, which makes chopping apples, tomatoes, cucumbers etc a breeze! It's a bigger machine, because it is a food processor primarily. Personally, I'd stick to the Platinum Pro.

5. VITAMIX!!! Love this!!!! This my friends, is the Bentley, Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Ashton Martin and Rolls Royce of Blender/Mixers. It does everything- makes ice cream, heats and makes soup (through friction, not heat which destroys enzymes), grinds flours (oat flour, wheat, coconut, garbanzo etc), makes Soy and Almond Milk, makes Nut Butters (peanut, almond, walnut, pecan, tahini etc- saves you so much money), smoothies, batters etc. It will pulverize anything! This is the ULTIMATE GIFT! They come in different models, and different versions (professional CIA, 4500 , red, black, platinum etc).

I own the Platinum one. It really is one of those things that is 'too good to be true' but actually is even better than advertised. This supersedes all expectations! Perfect for anyone on any diet! Great for Raw Vegans, because it doesn't use heat in the conventional sense. All the enzymes are left intact, along with all the nutrients. You do not core/peel/chop anything. Just dump the fruit (ex apple) into it whole. Saves so much time! Great for baby food etc.
GET THIS! IT IS LIFE CHANGING!

I realize these have all been Kitchen Gadgets and appliances thus far.
Next post I will delve into different categories, price points, and various other items!

What about you guys? What are some gadgets you LOVE and cannot live without, or have come to depend on?