Convert 1 Ounces to Grams

The Troy Ounce Trap

If you follow gold prices, buy precious metals, or read financial news about commodities, you need to know this: the ounce used to price gold and silver is not the same ounce you use in the kitchen.

• Avoirdupois ounce: 28.3495 g. This is the everyday ounce for food, packages, body weight, and everything else in daily life. When a recipe says "4 oz of chocolate," this is the one.
• Troy ounce: 31.1035 g. This is used exclusively for precious metals, gemstones, and some pharmaceutical measurements. When the news says "gold is $2,300 per ounce," they mean troy ounces.

That is roughly a 10% difference. If you are buying a 1 oz gold coin and assume it weighs the same as 1 oz on a kitchen scale, you will be off by nearly 3 grams. For gold at current prices, that 3 grams represents hundreds of dollars of value.

Our converter uses the standard avoirdupois ounce (28.3495 g) since that is what the vast majority of users need. If you are working with precious metals, multiply grams by 0.03215 to get troy ounces, or divide by 31.1035.

Ounces vs Fluid Ounces: Weight vs Volume

This trips up cooks constantly. Ounces (oz) measure weight. Fluid ounces (fl oz) measure volume. They happen to share a name because one fluid ounce of water weighs almost exactly one ounce at room temperature. But that convenient coincidence breaks down for anything that is not water:

• 1 fl oz of honey weighs about 1.5 oz
• 1 fl oz of vegetable oil weighs about 0.95 oz
• 1 fl oz of flour weighs about 0.5 oz

When a recipe says "8 oz of cream cheese," it means by weight (put it on a scale). When it says "8 fl oz of milk," it means by volume (use a measuring cup). Context usually makes it clear, but imported recipes that just say "oz" without specifying can cause real problems.

Everyday Reference Points

Building intuition for ounces-to-grams helps you navigate cooking, shipping, and nutrition labels without always reaching for a converter:

• 1 oz = 28.35 g -- about the weight of a slice of bread
• 4 oz = 113.4 g -- a standard deck of playing cards, or a quarter-pound burger patty before cooking
• 8 oz = 226.8 g -- a standard block of cream cheese in the US
• 12 oz = 340.2 g -- a can of soda (by volume it is 12 fl oz, but the liquid plus can weighs close to 12 oz too)
• 16 oz = 453.6 g -- one pound, exactly

That last one is the relationship worth memorizing: 16 ounces equals 1 pound. From there, you can work out that 1 pound is about 454 grams, and each ounce is roughly 28 grams.

Nutrition Labels and Portion Sizes

US nutrition labels list serving sizes in both grams and ounces. A "1 oz serving" of chips is 28 grams, which is typically about 15 chips. Understanding this conversion helps when comparing products that label differently, or when following a diet plan that uses one system while your kitchen scale displays the other.

For a complete ingredient reference table covering 60+ foods with weight-to-volume conversions, see our cooking unit conversions guide.