Weighing Ice Cream in Canada

Surely its on the nutrition label on the side like everything else?

I just checked - they are in mls instead of grams, but they nutrition label is there. OP I would just treat it as a liquid and measure is that way. It is a liquid actually - a frozen liquid.

sjaplo wrote: »

I just checked - they are in mls instead of grams, but they nutrition label is there. OP I would just treat it as a liquid and measure is that way. It is a liquid actually - a frozen liquid.

Yeah but it's kinda tough to fit ice cream in a measuring cup, lol.

I'm a little rusty on my math, but I think this would work:

First, weigh an empty ice cream carton. This should be fairly standard if you stick with one brand of ice cream.

Then weigh a full ice cream carton of the same size, in your desired flavor.

Math time:
Full weight - Weight of the empty carton = Weight of all the ice cream in the carton

Then read the carton's nutritional label. Check for number of servings per carton and number of calories per serving.

More Math:
Number of calories per serving x Number of servings per carton = Number of calories in the whole carton

Number of calories in the whole carton / Weight of all the ice cream in the carton = Calories per gram of ice cream

Calories per gram of ice cream x Number of grams you ate = Calories of ice cream you ate

Could you try and figure out the calories in the whole carton? Then you would know there are 2000 calories in 2 litres (for example). Then weigh the full container. Now you know that 2 litres weighs 1300g/1.3kg (again for example). You can then figure out how many calories your serving has based on weight (if 1300g has 2000 calories, then 150g has X calories).
Makes sense?

I just checked the equivalency for milliliters to grams (of water) and it's 1 to 1.

Is that useful? I really don't know b/c American.

Also here's the link.

GF125 wrote: »

sjaplo wrote: »

Why not just buy an appropriately sized ice cream scoop. I have many different sizes on the shelves in my warehouse.............

An ice cream scoop is a great tool for measuring volume, but inaccurate for measuring weight (grams).

That being said, I rarely measure food in weight. I like my American measurements of cups, tablespoons, etc. even though I know they aren't as accurate.

But the nutritional labelling is listed by volume. Why would you not use the information available? Liquids should be measured by volume, solids by weight. Needing to convert ice cream to grams in order feel you have the proper "weight" so you can eat it is like only buying gasoline for your car in 1 gal ( or liter) bottles because you can't don't trust the weights and measures act.

I certainly don't weight beer before I drink it.

I was looking for an easier way to figure this out and came across this old thread.

Ice cream is a weird product, there is air in ice cream which gives it the texture we love! So if you take a cup of ice cream and just leave it a bowl and let it melt, it certainly will not be a full cup afterward.

It will weigh the same though, so here is what you need to do...

1. weigh the full container - write it down
2. take all the iced cream out of the container in comes in, and weigh the container and save the weight.
3. full container less empty contain equals weight of ice cream.
4. Volume on container label = weight of the ice cream (for example if the container says it's 1L and the actual weight is 800g) then you know that 1L = 800g.

weight / volume - 800/1000 (1L = 1000mL) or .8
if serving size is 1/2 cup or 125mL then .8 * 125 = 100g

put it in a note on your phone so you don't have to do this over and over
if you buy the same brand, save the container weight.

different flavors will weigh different amounts unfortunately.

This is a zombie thread. But just another thought to complicate things: Is the volume measured frozen or not frozen? Frozen fluids have a smaller volume that liquids. And if you warm up the fluid the volume is a tiny bit bigger, and vaporize it even more. Hmm.. is it possible to inhale ice cream?

Yeah, zombie thread, and like so many old threads, it seems kind of bizarre.

I'm all for accuracy in food measurement . . . but I'd have to be eating a lot more ice cream than I'd want to fit into my calorie allowance before I'd stress out over the accuracy loss of a volume measure (like ml) vs. a weight measure (like grams) if the former were pretty easy to figure (measured scoop) and the latter not readily calculated. I would think we'd be talking about a few grams or milliliters of error per serving, tops.

Maybe other people eat way more ice cream way more often than I do, and choose the caloric high end (like Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby at around 720 calories a US cup (about 237 ml)) when they do eat it. Dunno.

FWIW, if a person truly wants to geek out about this, the density of ice cream in grams per milliliter (for converting milliliters to grams with more accuracy) is estimated on various web sites. The Australian food authorities, for example, say:

Regular fat: 0.56
Reduced or low fat: 0.55
Rich (fat greater than 12.5%): 0.63

Source:https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/npc-specific-gravities.pdf

grams = milliliters × density
milliliters = grams ÷ density

For example, that would make 100 milliliters of regular fat ice cream weigh about 56 grams, or 100g of regular fat ice cream measure about 179 milliliters, I think.

But that's Australian ice cream, I suppose. There are published conversion factors from other countries, but that one was easy to find/quote, and others don't look wildly different. There are even calculators online that do the conversion for a middling value of density (such as 0.554 g/mL in this one: https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/gram-to-milliliter/ which will do conversions in either direction).

All of the above assumes I did the arithmetic accurately, which is never a sure bet.

No matter where a person is, though: How much extra effort is the presumed extra accuracy worth, in the real life big picture context, as a practical matter? Of course that's a question for the individual.

(Yeah, I like nerdy rabbit holes.)

Lietchi wrote: »

How would you even measure ice-cream in volume, accurately. That is what seems complicated to me, way easier to weigh. How soft is your ice-cream if you can fill volume measurements easily? 🤪

PS Ben &Jerry's ratio seems to be around 0.88 for the ones I checked, chunks matter!

In the US, there exist portioning ice cream scoops. They may not be quite as accurate as a measuring cup for a liquid, but it's very much like a measuring cup with a handle, a top that can be leveled with a knife if desired, and a sweep-y push-lever device that releases the ice cream. It'd be reasonable close, I think.

And we're talking about countries where the label doesn't include a serving weight, so using weight isn't as easy as it is in countries where weight is on the label.

My larger point was "how often is a person eating ice cream, how much ice cream is it, how calorie dense is that particular flavor, and how far off in calories (or body fat loss rate) is any imperfect way of measuring it likely to be?"

If it's straightforward to measure by weight, sure, that's best. If it's not straightforward, I think it's reasonable to consider whether the approximation (whatever it is) is so far off as to be a problem in the big picture.

A mainstream ice cream (say Breyer's Vanilla Chocolate Strawberry, in the US) is around 160 calories per 2/3 C serving. A premium ice cream (many of the Ben & Jerry's flavors, for example) runs more like 400 calories per 2/3 cup serving. As noted, the grams per volume differ by flavor, but the Breyer's seem generally to be around 80-some grams per 2/3 cup, B&J more in the 140s, approximately.

If a person measures carefully in some sensible way (like a measured scoop) rather than weighs, how much off will the result be? 20% off would be quite a lot, IMO. Could be under (more likely) or over (less likely) in estimating calories. But 20% is 32 calories for the mainstream ice cream, 80 calories for the premium, in the standard serving size.

Maybe someone is eating full servings (or more) of premium ice cream daily, but I don't think most of us would when reducing calories. (I'm not judging those who do.) If the calorie estimate is 32 or 80 calories low consistently, and we eat a standard serving of ice cream every single day, then that's 0.064 or 0.16 pounds (1.024 or 2.56 ounces) slower fat loss for the week, or in metric about 29.1 or 72.7 grams slower fat loss.

As always, that's if I did the arithmetic accurately, as I try to do.

If anyone wants to, they can do the arithmetic for actual types of ice cream they eat, in the frequencies and amounts they typically eat, to think about practicality vs. probable estimating error.

IMO, if the accuracy is easy, yeah, go for it. I'd be accurate (weigh food) whenever practical. But if it's hard to reach that accuracy, how much angst or effort is that much difference in calories (and weight loss rate) worth? That's an individual decision.

Personally, I'd make my most accurate easy/practical measurement, log the calories, and not worry about it. In a context where everything is estimates and approximations, I'm fine with that approximation. But that personal decision would be based on amounts/frequencies/types of ice cream I might eat. Others mileage will vary.