Grams to Ounces Food Conversion Guide

Most food in the world is weighed in grams. Most food packaging in the United States is labeled in ounces. When a recipe from one country meets a kitchen scale from another, you need to convert.

The conversion itself is simple. The complication is that "ounce" can mean two different things depending on what you are weighing — and using the wrong one gives you a wrong answer.

For quick conversions, the Weight Converter handles grams, ounces, pounds, and kilograms in one place.

The Basic Conversion: Grams to Ounces

One avoirdupois ounce (the kind used for food) equals 28.3495 grams.

To convert grams to ounces:

ounces = grams ÷ 28.3495

Or, for a fast mental estimate: divide grams by 28. That gives you a result within about 2%, which is close enough for most cooking.

To go the other direction:

grams = ounces × 28.3495

Grams to Ounces Reference Table

The values at 28 g, 113 g, 225 g, and 450 g are the most useful to remember — they correspond to 1 oz, 4 oz, 8 oz, and 16 oz (1 pound) respectively.

Avoirdupois Ounce vs Troy Ounce

There are two types of ounce, and they are not the same.

The avoirdupois ounce (28.3495 g) is what every food recipe, grocery package, and kitchen scale uses. It is the default meaning of "ounce" in everyday life.

The troy ounce (31.1035 g) is used exclusively for precious metals — gold, silver, platinum. If you are buying gold bars, the price is per troy ounce. If you are measuring flour, it is the avoirdupois ounce.

The difference is about 10%. Using troy ounces when you mean food ounces will throw your measurements off noticeably. This rarely trips people up in cooking, but it comes up occasionally when someone looks up "ounce" and lands on a precious metals reference.

Unless you are working with gold or silver, use 28.35 g per ounce.

Common Food Weights in Grams and Ounces

Knowing what typical food portions actually weigh helps you spot when a conversion is wildly off.

Proteins:

• A chicken breast: 150–250 g (5–9 oz), average around 180 g (6.3 oz)
• A large egg: about 50–60 g (1.8–2.1 oz) in the shell, 44 g without
• A typical beef burger patty: 113 g (4 oz) for a quarter-pounder before cooking

Dairy:

• A stick of US butter: 113 g (4 oz / ½ cup)
• 1 cup of grated parmesan: about 100 g (3.5 oz)
• A slice of cheese: 28–30 g (roughly 1 oz)

Produce:

• A medium apple: about 180 g (6.3 oz)
• A medium banana (peeled): about 120 g (4.2 oz)
• A large carrot: about 70 g (2.5 oz)

Dry goods:

• 1 cup of all-purpose flour: about 120–130 g (4.2–4.6 oz)
• 1 cup of white sugar: about 200 g (7 oz)
• 1 cup of rolled oats: about 90 g (3.2 oz)

Why Weighing by Grams is More Accurate Than Cups

For dry ingredients especially, volume measurements are unreliable.

A cup of flour scooped from a bag can range from 120 g to 160 g depending on how packed it is. That 40-gram difference — about 1.4 oz — is enough to make a meaningful difference in bread and pastry texture.

Weighing in grams eliminates this variability entirely. 130 g of flour is 130 g of flour regardless of how loose or compact it is. This is why professional bakers and most European recipes give ingredient weights rather than cup volumes.

If you are scaling a recipe up or down, gram weights are also much easier to calculate. Halving "1¼ cups" requires thinking; halving 150 g is just 75 g.

Grams to Ounces in Food Labeling

US nutrition labels list serving sizes and nutrient weights in grams, even though the product weight on the front of the package is often shown in ounces. A bag labeled "12 oz" will show nutritional content per serving in grams.

A 12 oz bag = 340 g. If the label says one serving is 28 g (roughly 1 oz), there are about 12 servings in the bag.

In the EU and most of the world, food is labeled in grams and kilograms. A 500 g bag of pasta, a 250 g block of butter, a 100 g chocolate bar — these are the standard reference sizes.

Working Without a Scale

If you have a recipe in grams and no kitchen scale, you can estimate using common measuring tools.

For liquids, 1 mL of water weighs 1 gram, so a measuring jug works. For other liquids, the density varies: milk is close to 1 g/mL, olive oil is about 0.92 g/mL.

For dry goods, volume-to-weight conversion is imprecise but usable as a rough guide:

• 1 tablespoon of flour ≈ 8 g
• 1 tablespoon of sugar ≈ 12 g
• 1 tablespoon of butter ≈ 14 g
• 1 teaspoon of salt ≈ 6 g

These are approximate. A scale is worth buying if you bake regularly — a basic digital kitchen scale costs very little and removes a lot of guesswork.

Quick Conversion Reference

• 1 oz = 28.35 g
• 100 g = 3.53 oz
• 500 g = 17.64 oz
• 1 kg = 35.27 oz = 2.205 lb

For anything beyond a quick mental check, the Weight Converter gives exact results and also handles pounds, kilograms, and stones if you need to cross between multiple systems.