Why Use Scales? Scales are used to ensure precision when cooking with ingredients that require exact measurements. Unlike soups or stews that may be more forgiving to their ingredients, baked goods require a high degree of accuracy. With scales, you can ensure that food tastes the same every time you make it by measuring the right quantity of ingredients. You can also help make sure that your family are eating a healthy and balanced diet by adapting the quantities of ingredients according to the number of people being cooked for.   Through the use of scales you can help prevent your family from overeating and putting on unhealthy amounts of extra weight. When you eat, your body takes energy from the food and uses it to keep you alive and well. However, when you eat too much food, your body is unable to make use of all the extra energy so it stores it as fat. By measuring the correct quantities of ingredients and by serving correct portion sizes you can avoid over-eating and help your body keep fit and healthy. Salter conducted a study recently which revealed that 2 standard US cups of flour could vary in content by as much as 73%, depending on how the flour settled. Using kitchen scales ensures a much more accurate and reliable measurement. In America, ingredients are usually measured out using standard sized cups.   In Europe however, we measure dry ingredients by their weight rather than volume. With people becoming more health conscious there has been a recent trend towards home cooking, and more people are using kitchen scales to ensure better portion control. Home cooking is a good way to monitor healthy eating, as it requires knowing exactly which ingredients to add to the dish. Many people opt for ready-made meals to fit in with their hectic and fast lifestyle, but very few know exactly what is in their food.