However, calorieking ALSO says that that very same 2.8 grams of sugar has 4.2 grams of carbohydrates. You can’t have 4 grams of something in 2 grams of substance. That’s like saying you could have 2 pounds or kilos of corn in 1 pound or kilo of vegetables.

Furthermore, they claim that .1 ounce of sugar can have either 9 calories and 2.3 grams carbs, or 11 calories and 2.8 grams carbs, or 16 calories and 4.2 grams of carbohydrates! All for the SAME .1 ounce of sugar!

So I would have to say that calorieking is *worthless* as any kind of information tool. It’s clear they got that wrong, and it’s impossible to know what else they’ve gotten wrong. If they use those erroneous calculations to calculate everything else that has sugar in it, their calculations could be WAY off… claiming either double or half the calories that are actually in something. If calorieking uses their base ingredients to build recipe and nutritional information for the rest of their foods, they are certainly way off, and it would be impossible to know which value for .1 ounce of sugar they used… and that could deadly for diabetics.

Teaspoons/tablespoons/quarts/gallons measure *volume*, and grams measure *weight*. But cups can ALSO measure weight. There are 8 ounces in one cup if you’re measuring by volume. But the WEIGHT ounces and the VOLUME ounces aren’t really the same. You don’t say someone weighs 20 gallons.

The confusion comes in when people think “Hey, 16 ounces in a pound, 8 ounces in 1 cup.” But you can’t conflate them that way. One pound of sugar *might not* be two cups.

As it turns out, an ounce of water actually weighs about two ounces. So 1/2 liquid ounce weighs one dry ounce. Which, if you check, means one dry ounce is around 4.2 grams. Calorieking is ALL wrong, and I hope I’ve been able to demonstrate why, and how they fell into that very common logic trap.

It’s very confusing because 8 liquid oz=1 cup, but 16 dry oz=1 lb. But 1 lb of sugar might be more or less than 2 dry cups. Why on earth we haven’t renamed one or the other (dry or liquid, better known as weight vs volume), I have no idea. It’s like saying a liter = 250 grams, for instance. You don’t buy 250 grams of gasoline/petrol. It doesn’t make any sense, so people do their best to extrapolate, and in CalorieKing’s case, are woefully (and possibly fatally, in some special-diet circumstances) incorrect.

I would let your friends know, and urge anyone who relies on CalorieKing to cease until CalorieKing figures out the difference between *weight* and *volume*, and doesn’t give vastly different results for the same measurement of an item.