Grams v. Ounces or Cups???

Awesomewow
Awesomewow Posts: 8 Member
in Getting Started
I am getting frustrated! I don't know whether the measurements in the food look up are oz (lb) or C when they are g. For example, I looked up a breakfast burrito this morning and the weight was in g, 187. Now, is that just over 6 oz, as in almost 1/2 lb? Or is it a cup and a half of the food? 😱😱

Replies

  • Awesomewow
    Awesomewow Posts: 8 Member
    Not the weight, the serving!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,168 Member
    Try the quantity drop-down. Once you bring up the food, if you see the measurement in ounces, click on the serving size. Then, click on the little down-arrow (triangle) next to where it says 187g. Often, something that's in grams will have ounces as an option in the drop-down, but not always. This would (usually) be ounces of weight, not fluid ounces.

    Alternatively, use an online conversion to convert (weight) ounces into grams, and use the grams value. There will be arithmetic involved, obviously.

    One ounce is about 28g (28.3495 if you want to be more exact). You can also use that and just do the arithmetic, if you want to use a database entry that's in grams, and you've measures in (weight) ounces.

    As goal06082021 said, there's no direct, generalized way to convert a weight measurement (grams (g), or weight-type ounces) into a volume measurement (cups, mililiters(ml), or fluid ounces), because a pound (weight measure) of something light/fluffy like marshmallows would be many more volume-measure units (like cups) than a pound of something dense like water.

    If you're weighing your food (which is quicker/easier than measuring in cups or whatever anyway), most modern scales can be switched to weigh in either grams or ounces anyway. (That would be weight ounces, not fluid ounces.)
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,091 Member
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    Cups and spoons are volumetric measurements. Grams and ounces are weight measurements. They're different ways to quantify foods. If you find a food in the database with a serving size of, let's say, 150g, that's equivalent to a bit over 5 oz, but you can't make any determinations about volume from just a mass.

    You can't tell how many cups of X food there are in 150g of it just by knowing the weight, because it depends on the food. 150g of, say, uncooked oats will occupy a smaller volume and thus contain more calories, being more densely packed, than, say, 150g of marshmallows. Or even cooked oats, for that matter, since they absorb water and expand in the course of cooking.

    It gets a tiny bit confusing, because fluid ounces (fl oz) are NOT THE SAME as ounces. Fluid ounces ARE a measurement of volume. You can also only really measure liquids in fl oz - if you see an entry for a dry or solid food with a serving size in fl oz, you should just look for a different entry.

    P.S.: Not all measuring cups are created equal. If your measuring cup looks like this, it is marked in FLUID OUNCES and it is for measuring liquids:
    533n71mplo94.png

    But if your measuring cup looks like this, it is NOT for measuring liquids, rather for dry goods:
    1esbfqql7m3q.png

    They DO NOT have the same volume and are not equivalent - try it yourself, if you have both kinds. Fill the 1-cup dry goods measuring cup with water and then pour that into your liquid measuring cup. This is why I just weigh everything in grams and find entries listing serving sizes in grams.

    Dry measuring cups and liquid measuring cups should hold the same volume; they are just designed to function better for measuring liquids (a line well below the top of a clear container so you easily can see when the liquid has reached the line, and usually a spout for easy pouring of liquid) or for measuring powdery, granulated, and small-piece solids (the relevant volume matches the entire container, right up to the brim, so you can level it off with a straight edge, like the back of a knife). If yours don't match, either you're not measuring carefully/properly, or one set isn't calibrated/designed properly.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    solids are weighed on a scale in grams

    liquids in a measuring cup

    truly, i weigh most everything in grams and find the correct database entry for it. most food scales can flip between grams and ounces, for those times when I can't find an entry (doesn't happen often, but sometimes).

  • Awesomewow
    Awesomewow Posts: 8 Member
    So more than likely the serving size that is listed in g would be weight! I didn't realize the drop down menu was equivalent servings... that would have answered my question! Thank you everyone
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    Awesomewow wrote: »
    So more than likely the serving size that is listed in g would be weight! I didn't realize the drop down menu was equivalent servings... that would have answered my question! Thank you everyone

    On a package you would have equivalent servings, for example, nuts often say: 1/4 C (28 grams). However, if you were to actually weigh that 1/4 C, for nuts like pecans and walnuts, I often get more that 28 grams in 1/4 C. So it is more accurate to weigh.

    If you were to use a USDA entry, you can have all sorts of options in the drop down that bear no relation to each other or to serving sizes.

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

    To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    Awesomewow wrote: »
    So more than likely the serving size that is listed in g would be weight! I didn't realize the drop down menu was equivalent servings... that would have answered my question! Thank you everyone

    Well, grams are a unit of weight, so yes.

    You have to be careful and pay attention to the different serving sizes in the dropdown, sometimes there's going to be some math involved. Usually what I see is the listed serving size, a single-unit serving size, and the whole container. Sometimes there's an entry for nutrition information per 100g as well, even if 100g is not the serving size as such, which as I understand it is a standard feature of European food labels. You can use any of them and the math should work out, but just make sure you're putting in the right number. Here's an example.

    Let's take a 226g (8oz) bag of walnuts. The label lists the serving size as 28g (1oz), there are 8 servings in the bag. You put your bowl on your scale and pour out 50g (a bit less than 2oz) of walnuts. There's 3 different ways you could log this:

    * 1.79 standard servings of 28g (50 divided by 28 is ~1.79)
    * 50 unit servings of 1g
    * 0.22 servings of the whole container (50 divided by 226 is ~0.22)
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    Cups and spoons are volumetric measurements. Grams and ounces are weight measurements. They're different ways to quantify foods. If you find a food in the database with a serving size of, let's say, 150g, that's equivalent to a bit over 5 oz, but you can't make any determinations about volume from just a mass.

    You can't tell how many cups of X food there are in 150g of it just by knowing the weight, because it depends on the food. 150g of, say, uncooked oats will occupy a smaller volume and thus contain more calories, being more densely packed, than, say, 150g of marshmallows. Or even cooked oats, for that matter, since they absorb water and expand in the course of cooking.

    It gets a tiny bit confusing, because fluid ounces (fl oz) are NOT THE SAME as ounces. Fluid ounces ARE a measurement of volume. You can also only really measure liquids in fl oz - if you see an entry for a dry or solid food with a serving size in fl oz, you should just look for a different entry.

    P.S.: Not all measuring cups are created equal. If your measuring cup looks like this, it is marked in FLUID OUNCES and it is for measuring liquids:
    533n71mplo94.png

    But if your measuring cup looks like this, it is NOT for measuring liquids, rather for dry goods:
    1esbfqql7m3q.png

    They DO NOT have the same volume and are not equivalent - try it yourself, if you have both kinds. Fill the 1-cup dry goods measuring cup with water and then pour that into your liquid measuring cup. This is why I just weigh everything in grams and find entries listing serving sizes in grams.

    Dry measuring cups and liquid measuring cups should hold the same volume; they are just designed to function better for measuring liquids (a line well below the top of a clear container so you easily can see when the liquid has reached the line, and usually a spout for easy pouring of liquid) or for measuring powdery, granulated, and small-piece solids (the relevant volume matches the entire container, right up to the brim, so you can level it off with a straight edge, like the back of a knife). If yours don't match, either you're not measuring carefully/properly, or one set isn't calibrated/designed properly.

    Right, I should have been more clear - they come out differently because the way you measure liquids is different from how you measure dry goods. Dry goods don't have a meniscus. There's also a good graphic that I don't have handy right now, showing the difference between weighing and measuring dry goods - the inclination is to pack the dry-goods cup as full as possible with whatever food you're measuring, which can add a significant number of calories to whatever you're eating, an extra 30-50% easily. So if you think your "1/2 cup" of Special K is 110 calories, but Kellogg's defines "1/2 cup" as 40g of cereal and you scooped out 60g, that's an extra 55 calories you aren't accounting for. That's not a lot, but if you do that all the time, you're probably not going to see much or any loss on the scale. You only need to eat an extra 100ish calories over maintenance each day to gain 10 lbs in a year - underestimate your Special K in the morning and you're already halfway there for the day.
  • nanastaci2020
    nanastaci2020 Posts: 1,072 Member
    8 ounces weight is not the same as 8 volume ounces. So assuming 8 ounces (mass) is a 'cup' is not going to work.

    Kind of like how I have a foot connected to each ankle, but my feet have no correlation to a 'foot' that is a measurement of length. My feet (the ones with toes) are not equal to a foot (meaning 12 inches). Same word, same spelling, but totally different meaning.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,091 Member
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    goal06082021 wrote: »
    Cups and spoons are volumetric measurements. Grams and ounces are weight measurements. They're different ways to quantify foods. If you find a food in the database with a serving size of, let's say, 150g, that's equivalent to a bit over 5 oz, but you can't make any determinations about volume from just a mass.

    You can't tell how many cups of X food there are in 150g of it just by knowing the weight, because it depends on the food. 150g of, say, uncooked oats will occupy a smaller volume and thus contain more calories, being more densely packed, than, say, 150g of marshmallows. Or even cooked oats, for that matter, since they absorb water and expand in the course of cooking.

    It gets a tiny bit confusing, because fluid ounces (fl oz) are NOT THE SAME as ounces. Fluid ounces ARE a measurement of volume. You can also only really measure liquids in fl oz - if you see an entry for a dry or solid food with a serving size in fl oz, you should just look for a different entry.

    P.S.: Not all measuring cups are created equal. If your measuring cup looks like this, it is marked in FLUID OUNCES and it is for measuring liquids:
    533n71mplo94.png

    But if your measuring cup looks like this, it is NOT for measuring liquids, rather for dry goods:
    1esbfqql7m3q.png

    They DO NOT have the same volume and are not equivalent - try it yourself, if you have both kinds. Fill the 1-cup dry goods measuring cup with water and then pour that into your liquid measuring cup. This is why I just weigh everything in grams and find entries listing serving sizes in grams.

    Dry measuring cups and liquid measuring cups should hold the same volume; they are just designed to function better for measuring liquids (a line well below the top of a clear container so you easily can see when the liquid has reached the line, and usually a spout for easy pouring of liquid) or for measuring powdery, granulated, and small-piece solids (the relevant volume matches the entire container, right up to the brim, so you can level it off with a straight edge, like the back of a knife). If yours don't match, either you're not measuring carefully/properly, or one set isn't calibrated/designed properly.

    Right, I should have been more clear - they come out differently because the way you measure liquids is different from how you measure dry goods. Dry goods don't have a meniscus. There's also a good graphic that I don't have handy right now, showing the difference between weighing and measuring dry goods - the inclination is to pack the dry-goods cup as full as possible with whatever food you're measuring, which can add a significant number of calories to whatever you're eating, an extra 30-50% easily. So if you think your "1/2 cup" of Special K is 110 calories, but Kellogg's defines "1/2 cup" as 40g of cereal and you scooped out 60g, that's an extra 55 calories you aren't accounting for. That's not a lot, but if you do that all the time, you're probably not going to see much or any loss on the scale. You only need to eat an extra 100ish calories over maintenance each day to gain 10 lbs in a year - underestimate your Special K in the morning and you're already halfway there for the day.

    Yes, absolutely agree on the superiority of measuring by weight for food logging (and baking if the recipe includes weights -- that's why I already had a kitchen food scale when I started using MFP). Just wanted to clear up the distinction between dry and liquid measuring cups.

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