Why is water measured in grams?

Wutang

Seriously, who measures liquids in grams? Is there a way to convert it to ounces without having to do the math?

moies

When I choose tap water, I get a choice of grams, fluid ounces, cups, and ice cubes.

Karen_Cronometer

Hi @Wutang

We enter the weight of all foods, if available because most nutrients are reported by weight rather than volume on the nutrition label - even for liquid products. If we have the weight of the serving size, we can easily calculate the nutrients in any serving size.

Just as @moies sugggested, using the NCCDB food item "Tap Water" will give you the option to add cups and fl oz, in addition to grams.

Best,

Susan_RD_101

In case you are wondering... 1 L of water = 1 kg of weight. We use this when calculating ins and outs with athletes and in hospital settings.

gearup328_2619

OK, I will be very picky here. Why even list spring water? Water is water and it all weighs the same. You say nutrients are listed by weight but spring water has none. You are asking me to use a work around patch to get what I want. I guess in a hospital or dialysis setting weight is important. The scale is used for that, not some obscure measurement where I have to do the math. A paracentesis will pull out liters of fluid but the in and out scale will tell the whole story. My water bottle is in oz and ml, not weight. My milk is in oz and if I really need to, I can adjust my digital food scale to measure oz of milk. Other liquid products are listed in oz and ml. Nutrients are printed on the label. When you pour a drink, you are not pouring grams. You pour ounces.

moies

Hi @gearup328_2619,
1. Why list spring water? Because I might want to have as detailed a journal as possible. Thus, I am happy to distinguish spring water from tap water.
2. Spring water has no nutrients: In the NCCDB listing in Cronometer it has measurable amounts of calcium, sodium, and magnesium.
3. Drinks should only be given in volume measurements not weight measurements in all settings used by a retail Cronometer client: I almost always use Cronometer's weight measurements in virtually countless situations. I will provide only one situation here. But I can give more later, if desired.

Let's say I mixed a bunch of foods together to make a meal. All the foods are fresh, so I did not need to add any water. I know the amount (weight or volume) of each ingredient added. I will also weigh the mixture before I cook it. After I am done, I weigh it again. The difference between the pre- and postcooking weights is the amount of water lost in weight measure.

I don't eat the entire recipe in one sitting. So, I will then create a recipe in Cronometer, making one of the ingredients a negative quantity of water, in weight measurements because I determined the water loss using my scale. Let's say I had raw onions and raw spinach in the recipe. When I am done, how much cooked onion and cooked spinach do I have? I don't know. I just know that the final product lost a certain weight in water.

My personal experience has shown me that it's just a lot more convenient (and usually accurate) to measure ingredients with a scale rather than with tablespoons and measuring cups.

gearup328_2619

Water does have some nutrients but they are insignificant. One 11oz bottle shows none. 5 11oz bottles show a very small amount of sodium, calcium and magnesium. I want you to notice that when water is entered, your choices are all in fl oz, not grams. Why not use fl oz and still give nutrients in grams? Why do I have to do the math conversion? Furthermore, I only look at the daily % of nutrients. That is the bottom line and I don't really care what it takes to get there--grams, ounces, liters, pounds..........except that liquids are measured in fl oz. Look at the label of any liquid drink and it will be in ounces.

Vickie

While I agree that fl oz should be added to the unit list so it is more convenient for US users who measure volume by it instead of metric units such as the litre or gram, it's difficult to take in their point of view when their position is "everything irrelevant to me is pointless!!!" and/or "my experience is the universal experience!!!"

This thread would have been far better off posted under Feature Requests as a "please add fl oz to water", listing whatever water entry is missing the fl oz unit.

gearup328_2619

OK. Please add fl oz to all water categories. I never said those words in quotations, so don't put words in my mouth. Those are your opinion. I am a US user and am asking for fl oz for liquid water of all types. Thank You.

Detritus

I, too, find the jumping back and forth with water listed in grams and ml confusing. For example, it will list the water I have been drinking in a day in ml, but then sets my target RDA for water in grams, at 2700 grams, which converts to around 95 ounces or almost 12 glasses of water per day!
And even when I set my own target amount of 8 glasses(64 oz)(1,814 grams) and I've so far had 4 glasses of water (8 oz each)=1/2 my target amount I'm told that I've only reached 27% of my target. So I think the conversion is messing things up a bit.

Karen_Cronometer

Hi Detritus,

What water product are you adding to your diary? If you are using brand name products, though counter-intuitive, most brand name beverages do not list the water content of their products. If you use the generic equivalent, for example "Spring Water" food #455768 (source NCCDB) you can be sure that you are getting credit for all that water you are drinking! The other benefit of using the generic equivalent is that they have fl oz listed as a serving size option. So you can choose 8 fl oz instead of converting to grams/mL.

Best,

Detritus

Ah, Ok, that explains it. It is because I add alkalinity drops to my spring water, so because there is no option for that, I was just selecting a random brand alkaline water. So I will from now on just pick the generic spring water, and ignore that I add drops. Thanks for your help!

gearup328_2619

Detritus, I too learned to use the generic listing. COM gives you all these brand choices but then tells us to use the generic? We have to figure this out ourselves because some brand choices are very complete and accurate and in the correct form of measurement.

gearup328_2619

Hi Karen, I can see where we enter the diary with fl oz and it is totaled using grams or mg as is everything else on COM. It makes sense because water is found in almost everything we eat. COM converts all ingredients into a weight.

Karen_Cronometer

Hi Gearup328_2619,

Unfortunately, we do not have the data for the chlorine or fluoride content of either Spring Water or Tap Water, to compare the two. I know here in Canada, water treatment, including how much chlorine and fluoride is used, is determined by the municipality in which you live. That might be a good place to start.

Best,

gearup328_2619

Hi Karen, I can see where this is the case. Since I only use spring water, I can get a lab report from the bottler. Oh well. Thank You.

pdrier

@Karen_Cronometer, it's fundamentally incorrect when you say "most nutrients are reported by weight rather than volume on the nutrition label"

By law in Europe, all LIQUIDS must provide nutrition information based on 100 ML.

I know cronometer is America centric, but Europe has 2x the people and seemingly is a bit more intelligent on this topic.