Pet Food Math?
All you ever wanted to know about your pet food label in numbers
How many ounces are in a cup?
Part 3
Hopefully you have been reading this series and are excited to find out the next step! We are now ready to find out how many actual cups there are in a package of food! This will help you to identify how long a package will last you and how much it will cost you to use the product you’re looking to buy. For me, this was easier to understand with a visual. Did you know that if you fill an 8oz measuring up with Cat Litter it will weigh 10oz? But if you fill an 8oz measuring cup with Popcorn it will usually weigh 2oz. There are a different number of cups in each even though they both weigh the same amount
So how many cups are in your pets’ food?
Step 1:
Find out how many ounces are in each cup of food.
Pet food brands that are compliant with regulations will say the number of calories there are in a kilogram (2.2lbs or 35.2oz), stated, “___kcals/kg,” and the number of calories there are in a cup, stated, “___kcals/cup.” You can see our example here.
| Crude Protein (min) | 24% |
| Crude Fat (min) | 7% |
| Crude Fiber (max) | 4% |
| Moisture (max) | 10% |
3,973kcals/kg, 451kcals/cup
For this particular product it says there are 3,731kcals/kg and 424kcals/cup.
In our previous post we learned two ways that you can find out how many calories are in an ounce – in this case, 113.
To find out how many calories are in a cup, we divide the number of calories in a cup by the number of calories in an ounce. In this case:
451(kcals/cup) / 113(kcals/oz) = 4 ounces per cup of food
Click “Next Post” for Part 4
How many cups are in the package?