MAJOR serving size discrepancy!! Help!

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  • jagh09
    jagh09 Posts: 555 Member
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    I'd go by what the box nutrition label says for a serving size.
  • lmarshel
    lmarshel Posts: 674 Member
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    I have this same dilemma, and my hubby and I actually have argued over it a couple of times. Yikes! The two will NEVER be the same, because cup is a unit of volume and gram is a unit of weight. But we Americans insist on sticking with our old UMs, so they still put that info on the box or bag for us. It's just not as accurate as the weight measurement.
  • 27strange
    27strange Posts: 837 Member
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    a CUP in the U.S. is a measurement of Volume, whereas grams are a measurement of weight. Always go by weight for items because it can't change or be altered. A CUP of cheerios can greatly be altered because of all the air space between the cereal pieces. I could crush or grind those cheerios and put a whole lot more in the CUP than 29grams. The CUP measurements on foods in the U.S. are just basic estimates by the company. If you have a scale you are better off weighing food items and going by the grams and ignore the CUPS.
  • rankailie
    rankailie Posts: 144
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    I too am in the UK so don't understand cup measuring. How much is a cup? Surely there are cups of different sizes? There are if you go in my pots cupboard . I always use digital scales but find that I use about 1.5 servings of cereal (allbran) otherwise I still feel hungry. So I weigh out and log 60g.

    1 cup = 8 fl oz (rounded down)
    8 fl oz = 237 ml (rounded up)

    I personally generally use fl oz myself if i'm measuring a liquid and grams if i'm measuring a solid.
  • Lysandra81
    Lysandra81 Posts: 18 Member
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    Well the US cup measurement confuses me really, I am from Germany and we - same as the UK - measure our stuff in grams or ml instead of ounces for fluids.

    Cup measurement might be easy on stuff like flour or rice but:

    How can you eat 1/2 cup of banana - a banana has a predefined shape - so a predefined volume. How would you use your measuring cup for a solid banana? Would you sit there and imagine how that solid banana would look like if you slice it up and put it in your measuring cup? That just cannot be accurate at anytime - where in comparison a gram is a gram no matter what shape your food has. I know there are these huge tables available explainig how much grams a cup of banana (or even worse broccoli) is - but that is just really too much effort.

    So whenever I look up anything on MFP I search until I'll find one entry that's measured in grams or the original state - like 1 banana or 100gr banana.

    So go with grams for your serving size when available on your boxes as it will always be accurate. :)

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