Category Archives: Metric Cooking

Weight Watchers and Measures

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By The Metric Maven

Filmmaker Amy Young, who is making a documentary film entitled: The State of The Unit: The Kilogram, has met her goal on Kickstarter. Thanks to everyone who contributed.  $22.7 K so far and needs to raise a total of $26.8 K (i.e. $4,100 more) in the next seven days to fund her film. Please consider donating to her Kickstarter campaign here. If you have contributed already, thanks. Now the blog.

My Youngest sister has been a member of Weight Watchers (WW) for many years. It has worked well for her, and continues to do so. The WW members have discussion threads where they talk about how to compute Weight Watchers points from food labels. The use of grams and Calories (versus calories) and kilojoules is a perennial topic for discussion. Here is an entry by SCHILA which my sister shared with me concerning an Italian food label:

This causes a face-palm. I realize that it’s not her fault, it’s our lack of the exclusive use of the metric system in the US, and how the incompatible mixture of metric and non-metric units pervades our culture which is to blame. One can immediately see that the Nutritional Information (NI) is actually all metric—in a sense. The Calorie is a pre-SI unit of energy, which was replaced by the Joule in 1948. The Calorie was “metric” 65 years ago.

According to Wikipedia:

Definitions of the calorie fall into two classes:

  • The small calorie or gram calorie (symbol: cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C at standard atmospheric pressure (101.325 kPa). This is approximately 4.2 joules.
  • The large calorie, kilogram calorie, dietary calorie, nutritionist’s calorie or food calorie (symbol: Cal)[2] approximates the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. This is exactly 1,000 small calories or approximately 4.2 kilojoules.

The difference between a calorie and a Calorie is a factor of 1000 in the US. Why shouldn’t SCHILA be confused. The label has Cal 122 KCAL which is a capitalized Calorie abbreviation, which then tries to make it more understandable by putting it in all caps as KCAL, which of course could be confused for Kilo-Kilo-calories. No wonder the poor woman is on a discussion thread asking for help. The logical solution to me is to be done with calories and Calories (1000 calories or a kilocalorie), switch to SI (official metric) and use kilojoules—like the rest of the world.

Here is a package of licorice from Australia (courtesy of Mike Joy). It is advertised as one meter long. The front of the package has only one mass (weight) given: 120 grams. That’s it!  You don’t need any other information.

On the back the nutritional information is:

Nutrional Label for Australian Licorice

We see that the Australian food vendors also use untidy numbers like 4.8 servings in a package. The serving size is 25 grams which is 353 kilojoules, that’s it! Every other description: protein, sugar, sodium and so on are broken out in grams or milligrams.

Ok, how many kJ’s do you get a day? Well in the US I generally see 2000 Calories on food labels as the recommended daily intake. This works out to about 8375 kilojoules. Look how many kJ’s you get! Doesn’t that sound better than 2000 Calories? Here is a short table to give you an idea of the range of kJ’s and the old way:

5000 kilojoules is 1194 Calories (1200)
5500 kilojoules is 1313 Calories (1300)
6000 kilojoules is 1433 Calories (1400)
6500 kilojoules is 1552 Calories (1500)
7000 kilojoules is 1671 Calories (1600)
8000 kilojoules is 1910 Calories (1900)
8500 kilojoules is 2030 Calories (2000)

So for many WW members somewhere between 5000 and 8500 kJ’s is the range for you to think about. The Australian Government has recently sponsored a push to get Australians to eat around 8700 kilojoules per day. Here is a page from their website:

click to enlarge image

So what does the back of a licorice label in the US look like? This is from Twizzler’s web page:

Not all that that different, other than the use of Calories (i.e. kilocalories). So what’s the big deal? Well, the big deal is that because the US is not exclusively metric like Australia, very few Americans have any idea what a gram is. (It is about the weight of a plain chocolate m&m). This lack of exclusive metric adoption in the US obscures dietary data that is readily available. Any confusion will cause many people to just not bother with the nutritional information.

Should we go back to Ye Olde English units on food packaging?—well they’re actually Olde English sizes used prior to the English reforming their units in 19th Century, but we’ll let that pass for now. Some people who believe claim they are trying to help the public say yes. These people are from the anti-metric Wall Street Journal, and like James Taranto are there to yelp—I mean “help.” Their anti-metric “Numbers Guy” seems to be more interested in running a numbers racket than actually enlightening people about numbers.

When the Wall Street Journal is on the side of the Center for Science in the Public Interest–watch out–what they have in mind is not in the public interest. They want teaspoons and tablespoons back! I’ve already written about how confusion between the two, and the lack of metric in the US kills about 98,000 persons in the US each year. It would also make our nutritional labeling completely incompatible with the rest of the world—which all use metric. They want to swap mass (grams) for volume (Tsp, Tbl)? Isn’t it bad enough we use ounces interchangeably for weight and volume already?  Do you think 8 (by weight) ounces of cheese doodles is a cup (8 oz by volume) of them? The Wall Street Journal has never found a bad Weights and Measures idea they didn’t like.

The frustration the rest of the world has with us is completely understandable and surfaces on the WW discussion thread:

All I can say is You Go Girl!

What started this WW discussion thread was a question about the nutrition label on the back of an Italian food product. If all our US packaging was in teaspoons and tablespoons, and grams became even more unfamiliar, this would further alienate us from 95% of the worlds population and their products. I guess the Wall Street Journal just can’t help themselves—they like trade barriers. Once again the inability of our legislators to pass mandatory metric only legislation for the US, with a plan, and funding, and so on, hurts the nations physical and economic health. Congress has been goofing around since 1866 thinking about metric, isn’t it time they finally got to work and dealt with the metrication issue?

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is not of direct importance to metric education. It is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas

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By The Metric Maven

Bulldog Edition

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”

This phrase is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and has been taken to indicate that people will immediately recognize the utility of a new invention, and especially in the US, adopt its use and abandon the inefficient. It’s contrapositive is also used as a rationalization that if an idea has not been adopted, then it clearly is deficient, and deserves oblivion. It is an assertion that people are not creatures of habit, who will cling to familiar methods and viscerally reject new ones.

This assertion seems to immediately breakdown by not matching the observed actions of humans. The desire to continue with the familiar over the unfamiliar is overwhelming for most people. The familiar is then taught to the next generation and mantled with words like “heritage” and “traditional” to justify continued usage in the face of a possibly better method.

Recently my friend Pierre, who has a considerable knowledge of cooking, brought me a recipe for Steak and Kidney pie. This quite surprised me as I would probably not eat that dish, even after a bet gone bad. Why on earth would he bring a recipe that he knows I would never make, and if told what the dish was, would not eat. It soon became clear the importance of the recipe was not about food, but about methods. The recipe is British, which immediately raises my culinary suspicion. It is described as “British Pub Grub.” If the recipe is not by Robert Irvine, I would almost certainly pass. Here is the recipe:

– Click to enlarge

It starts out well, calling for ingredients in grams, and milliliters, then begins to become less rigorous when it asks for a “few thyme sprigs” then degenerates into tablespoons and a “bunch of flat-leaf parsley,…” The Chef then moves on to instruct us that we should “Cut the beef into 2.5cm pieces.” Centimeters!? No wonder the British lost their empire. After coating the beef with flour we are next instructed to “Heat a wide, heavy based pan, then add a few knobs of butter…” What?! Suddenly grams are no longer of use? The Metric Maven then found himself so light-headed that procuring a paper bag to put over his head became a priority. Couldn’t the recipe be a little less precise?—I still almost have a vague idea what the quantity might be.

The beef based ingredients are then to be enclosed in “500g good-quality ready-made puff pastry.”  But we must first “Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6.” Gas 6?! what on earth is Gas 6? Well, Gas 6 is a “Gas Mark” which was originally called Gas Regulo Mark 6. Why? According to Wikipedia:

“Regulo” was a type of gas regulator used by a manufacturer of cookers; however, the scale has now become universal, and the word Regulo is rarely used.

Universal? Universal? I’d never heard of it until Pierre brought me this measurement train wreck of a recipe. Then I’m informed that similar “scales” exist in France and Germany? Here are the conversions (according to Wikipedia):

Gas markFahrenheitCelsiusDescriptive
1⁄4225°107°Very Slow/Very Low
1⁄2250°121°Very Slow/Very Low
1275°135°Slow/Low
2300°149°Slow/Low
3325°163°Moderately Slow/Warm
4350°177°Moderate/Medium
5375°191°Moderate/Moderately Hot
6400°204°Moderately Hot
7425°218°Hot
8450°232°Hot/Very Hot
9475°246°Very Hot

Different manufacturers and oven types do vary, so this table cannot be relied upon; instead, cooks should refer to the cooker instruction book for the oven type used, or calibrate the scale using an oven thermometer.

What is this? A next step up from the Easy-Bake Oven? The pastry is to be rolled out to the thickness of a ₤1 coin! Ahhhhhhhhhhh!–doesn’t he know what a millimeter is!  In my view Gas Marks and Knobs resonate with an actual quotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

We in the US and apparently some in the UK desire “a foolish consistency” over “a rational simplicity.”

You might have noted that I said “actual quotation.” Well, the mousetrap quotation of Emerson, presented at the beginning, appeared seven years after his death. The original quotation upon which the fictional one is based is (again according to Wikipedia):

The phrase is actually a misquotation of the statement:

If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my viewpoint, this actual quotation appears to praise good craftsmanship, and quality work, and is not an aphorism about technical innovation and the populace. We in the US have embraced “a foolish consistency” of weights and measures for over 150 years by not embracing the metric system, and eschewing the imperial measurement chaff.

The only way we will start to modernize the US, is to first embrace the metric system and other modern international standards. We have been waiting for the fraudulent appeal to our vanity, embodied in the false mousetrap quotation, to bring us the best for over 150 years. It’s time for America to stop playing hooky and pass metric conversion laws, with funding, and a plan to bring metric to the US, and embrace a better future for out nation.

Post Script

Assistant Professor Hong Qin of Spelman College has asked that I make my readers aware of a survey he and his students are conducting on metric, scientific literacy and attitude.  The survey is here should you be interested in taking it to provide them with more data.

Best,

MM

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is not of direct importance to metric education. It is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.