Why is Weight Required to Calculate Nutrition Data?

This article explains why we require ingredients to have a weight in order to calculate nutrition data.

We have been asked countless times questions such as the following:

"I buy [some ingredient] by volume (e.g. liters or fluid ounces) but the nutrition data won't calculate unless I define a weight, what do I do?"

Or

"I'm working with the nutrition label for my salad dressing recipe. It is requiring me to enter a weight. Most commercial dressings show a serving size in tbsp or ml. What do I do?"

There are a few reasons why we require a weight to be defined for ingredients that you use to calculate nutrition data. These reasons include:

  1. The largest publicly available sources of nutrient data (Food Data Central) uses 100 grams (a weight) as the base measurement of nutrition data for pretty much every ingredient contained within.
  2. Undeniably, the most accurate way to measure any ingredient for a recipe or a nutrition label is by weight. Measuring any ingredient by volume can result in significant errors due to measuring cups and spoons of non-standard sizes, differences between metric cups vs. imperial cups, etc. Grams are an absolute and universal standard for measuring nutrition data.

So what do you do?

The easiest way to solve this problem is to create a measurement converter in your ingredient to convert between weight and volume.

We offer a three minute video to help you get this sorted out:

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