Mary Poppins famously said, “A spoonful helps the medicine to go down.” But given that child under her care has been treated for multiple cavities and type 2 diabetes*, could she have made a mistake in her calculations. Refrain from finding yourself in this situation where you must defend your childcare credentials before a judge. Instead, find out how much sugar is in one spoonful and why Brits are sweeter than Americans.
This article is for all those who are carb-watchers and calorie counters. It’s also for all fructose lovers, sweeties, sugar-lovers, dessert-loving darlings, and honey-lovers. Tuck in.
What is the nationality of your teaspoon?
This is not a spoon. No, it’s not.”
In the United States of America, spoons are universal, where everything makes sense (removing the redundant ‘u” from words such as ‘color’ and building roads in blocks instead of the roundabouts, winding nightmares of Britain). All teaspoons are the same size and measure the same in every state, house, or restaurant. Sensible right? It’s a good idea.
A teaspoon in the UK can be whatever you like. Does it look like a small stick with a scoop at the end? You have a teaspoon, eh? It’s harder to identify a teaspoon in a home with 3 or 4 sizes of cutlery. Previously, UK recipes would refer to the imperial spoon (5.919ml). The metric teaspoon is now the most common—the metric teaspoon measures 5ml, nearly 20% smaller than imperial measurements.
Converting between grams and teaspoons
We can now do some maths after getting over the transatlantic awkwardness.
In recipes and on ingredient lists, sugar is often listed by weight. This is sometimes convenient, but you may make a batch without scales or on a low-carb diet and need to quickly calculate how many spoons are in the can of a cold drink.
The calculation is whether you are interested in sugars that occur naturally (which can give you a high number for a glass of fruit juice) or sugars added and refined (I’m talking to you, delicious brownies).
It’s not a big deal, but it is essential to know that the teaspoon can be different outside of the US. (If you use a 6ml spoon in the UK instead of the standard version, you could add 20% more sugar to your recipe).
If you ever need to convert, use our teaspoons-to-grams converter or grams-to-teaspoons converter.
Example
Mary wants to know if she can justify eating her peanut butter cookie based on her mantra. She divides by 4 to get the answer of 3.5. She eats a cookie after taking 3.5 doses of unneeded medicine. Mary is in the hospital, and sugar is not the worst of her problems.
Mary bakes pies for her children, and the recipe calls for 120g of sugar. She divides 120g by 4 to get 30. She started counting 30 spoonfuls of level food before being removed from the house and asked why she still worked as a nanny when her license had been revoked.
A sweet goodbye
This should help you to understand how to convert easily between grams (grams) and teaspoons. I’m going to apply for The Great British Bake Off…
Malcolm Reeves, Food Scientist, comments
The media loves to exaggerate the sugar content of food. They don’t like to ruin a good story with facts. Suppose you multiply the metric volume of your teaspoon (5 mL, which is the level teaspoon) by the bulk density (which is 845.35mg/ml) of white household table sugar (not to confuse with the dry sugar density, which includes the air between crystals at about 1.59g/mL). In that case, the result is an astounding 4.23g. We could round this to 4g.
