The best way to measure pasta like this is to throw it from the packet into a bowl and you can get a good estimate of how much you need.

it is integrated in the box of the straight pasta... how is it "limited use" other than being part of the box that goes in the trash when the straight pasta is gone?

It’s limited to the boxes that have it…

I weigh any shape of pasta in a similar way, just without the box. (I.e., fistfuls)

It's actually more ingenious for spaghetti, because for fusilli/etc, you can just put scales on the packaging.

Say that you divide 500 grams in 6 servings (84ish grams each), you only need to print 4 lines on the package. You can do it either externally if the packaging is transparent, or you can even do it internally if it's not (like a carton Barilla box).

All you need to do is to empty it till when vertical it reaches levels at around the next line.

You could have a lid that folds back from the top of the box to form a cup that the box could pour into.

Or just take a deep dish and fill it with dry pasta. At some point you get a feeling for it.

Yep, a pound of pasta is about 4 good servings for an adult so use that to factor how much or little you want. I'll typically make one pound of pasta for my wife and I for dinner and lunch the next day. Although depending on the sauce or any added meat, it could easily be 5 or more servings. Growing up, my mom would use one 1lb box of pasta, one 24oz jar of sauce, one onion, and 1lb of ground beef to make enough food for a family of two adults and three kids.

200g is indeed a lot, but some in some occasions go for it. I probably should have wrote that the minimum is 60g for some people. They're extremes, the more "usual" usual portion is probably in the range 80-150. This makes it hard to make a consistent measurement device.

200g, wow. Someone is very hungry.

used to be 90g when we had 3 courses per meal (primo, secondo, formaggio/frutta)

150g nowadays if y only have one course and are hungry

200g is indeed a lot

This is such an HN comment and I love it. Get a cheap kitchen scale (with 0.1g accuracy) and weigh everything when you want a snack or an individual meal.

For family meals or when you want leftovers convert your common recipes to being weight based. On some common seasonings (Costco sized) I write the conversion for that seasoning for 1 tablespoon in grams. So much easier to combine dry ingredients without needing a litany of measuring utensils.

I weigh pasta on the scales pretty much every time I cook it. That way you know pretty accurately how many calories you're consuming. I don't think I'd use this because it looks less accurate.