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Do you consume your medicines spoon by spoon? Scientists found in a new test  at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab that you can go quite wrong with teaspoon and tablespoon measurements. You might be either overdosing or underdosing yourself.

"When measuring medicine for ourselves or our children, we often use regular kitchen spoons but they are not accurate measuring instruments," Koert van Ittersum, lead author of the study, said in a news release.

Hence, if you are using a teaspoon, you underserve a dose by 8.4 percent, while with a tablespoon, you may be over serving by 11.6 percent. In a test conducted on 177 young adults, the doses were measured out in millilitres, which showed that 34.5 percent of the participants used kitchen spoons to measure out the medicines.

About 60.9 percent of the participants preferred to use a teaspoon when given dosage information in teaspoons. No one reached out for a milliliter measuring cup. This group seemed to show a 50 percent risk of dosage error.

"While we feel that we can estimate teaspoon doses, milliliters are much harder to estimate visually, therefore people are more likely to use accurate measuring spoons or cups when given dosage information in milliliters," van Ittersum said.

The findings of this study were published in BMC Research Notes.