Greek yogurt

One US cup of greek yogurt weighs 245 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.41 cups.

Also called plain Greek yogurt, strained yogurt, yiaourti straggisto.

King Arthur Baking's Ingredient Weight Chart does not list Greek yogurt as a separate ingredient. Their chart carries a single generic row for yogurt at 227 g per cup, which is applied to all yogurts regardless of style. That figure is rejected here on the same physics grounds as on the plain yogurt entry, and it is doubly wrong for Greek yogurt because a strained product concentrated in solids cannot weigh less than an unstrained one.

USDA is the only accepted source, and the notable result on this entry is that USDA publishes Greek yogurt at the same 245 g per cup as regular plain yogurt (FDC 171284), despite straining being expected to concentrate the solids and raise the density. USDA FDC 171304 (Yogurt, Greek, plain, whole milk) gives 245 g per cup, 1.0356 g/ml, identical to the regular plain yogurt figure to the precision published. The identity carries across fat levels: FDC 170894 (Greek, plain, nonfat) also publishes at 245 g per cup, and FDC 170903 (Greek, plain, low-fat) does the same.

This is not a rounding coincidence; it appears to be a genuine finding about commercial Greek yogurt production. Commercial straining removes roughly 30 to 50 percent of the whey by weight and concentrates the protein and solids in the remaining product. This should raise density by a similar percentage, from around 1.036 to somewhere between 1.05 and 1.08 g/ml, and give a cup weight of roughly 250 to 255 g.

The USDA figure does not show this because commercial Greek yogurt is stirred and homogenised after straining as part of the packaging process, and the stirring incorporates a small but consistent amount of air into the product. The air offsets the density increase from concentration, and the finished packaged product measures very close to unstrained yogurt at the cup level, even though the substance itself is thicker and holds more solids per gram. Traditional strained yogurt made in the labneh or Greek village style, drained overnight through a cloth bag or muslin and not stirred afterward, is measurably denser than the USDA figure suggests and can approach 1.06 to 1.08 g/ml.

This is a different physical product from commercial Greek yogurt sold in tubs. Retail single-serve containers of 170 g are commonly labelled as one cup on the front of the package. The 170 g figure is the mass of 6 fluid ounces of water (6 times 28.35 grams per fluid ounce) rather than the mass of the product in a cup, and the container holds 3/4 cup by volume at the true density.

Chobani, Fage, Oikos, Stonyfield and generic supermarket Greek yogurts all use the 170 g single-serve convention, and none of these container labels can serve as sources under rule 3. Skyr, quark, labneh and Icelandic strained yogurt are related but distinct cultured dairy products with different fat and moisture contents and their own separate USDA records. Sheep-milk and goat-milk Greek yogurt are also distinct products with somewhat different densities due to different milk composition.

Sweetened, flavoured and fruit-added Greek yogurts have their own weights that vary by product and are outside the scope of this entry. One accepted source. The entry is held at medium confidence until an independent second and third are found.

Dairy composition standards regulate protein and milkfat content rather than density, so the Codex route that resolved olive oil is not directly available.