When a cup isn't a cup...

Here's a piece of trivia that I found interesting, and frankly, a bit strange.

You likely have seen that many food packaging labels in the U.S. describe serving sizes in units of cups. You're also likely to have come across cup unit measurements in various cooking/baking recipes.

However, what you're not likely to know is that these sizes are not the same. A cup used for nutrition labeling is dictated by U.S. laws to be 240mL, or roughly 8.115 customary fluid ounces. This is a little more than 1.44% more volume than the standard cup used in all your favorite recipes.

And, I thought I'd throw this out at you all as well... a Japanese cup is defined to be only 200 mL. I'd be interested to know if Japanese cookbooks refer to this smaller volume cup, the traditional one, or some other definition altogether.

Isn't it about time that we just standardize the definition? Seems silly to me the way things are today (not that I've ever noticed the distinctions).