Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?

[PlayUltimate]

Yep, I never knew how much they meant when a recipe calls for a "dash of cinnamon" or a "pinch of salt" or a "tad" of cocoa powder. I always thought it meant just an arbitrary wee bit, since cooking isn't exacting. My sister-in-law, an avid cook👩‍🍳, had these tiny spoons that told you exactly how much a dash, a tad, a pinch was. I just order a set for myself so I cooking will be more hit😋 than miss🤮.

Have a set myself.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Well, marksmanship is an acquired skill, and not everyone is a born sniper!

Certainly not him. Even now, I'm sure. His ex seemed happy to 'turn him loose'. He keeps wanting to come here 'for a few days'. Hell no!!!

 

[ThemePro]

"SINGLE GODDAMN COUNTRY WHY IS THAT NECESSARY?..WHY THE ILLOGICALITY?"

Never seen a Canadian so angry and salty; have you considered edibles? 😜

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

you could be taking my comment a little too seriously....
they are both great singers and fun humans
who suffered with a complex MAYBE the metric system might have solved.

Anorexia Nervousa is a mental condition where no matter how skinny a person (it also effects men, although not as much). You can look at her pictures and see a skeleton, and she would look at herself and see a fat cow that 'needs to lose some weight'.

It's commonly believed that AN is caused by a need to control an out of control perceived environment by the only way they can control it; by controlling their weight and their appearance. Bulimia and many other self punishing practices are linked to AN victims. Some people are able to get out of the vascious cycle, but then something can trigger them to go back into it again. As in Karen's case, her symptoms were ignored, or misdiagnosed for years, and at the time when she was apparently getting some help, she slipped into it harder, and died.

So your use of her as an example, even in jest, of people that could have been helped if they used a metric based scale is not funny. She was mentally ill, and the recording companies and her own family, and brother, kept riding her ever shrinking shadow to riches.

I personally think her brother was a loathsome POS, and should have been locked in jail for a couple hundred years. He was brutal with her, and was probably, according to articles, the one that fed her illness (no pun intended). He rode her to produce, and look nice, and tour and write and record, and be on TV, and it all just fed her insecurities and literally burned her to the ground.

Anorexia is not fun, and horrendous to watch. My sister went through it for a couple of years in high school, and then got counseling and was able to pull herself to a point where she wasn't constantly starving herself. Ironically my other sister didn't help. She was 'plump', and yeah, family and others weren't helping with their comments and attention...

It's entirely possible that Mamma Cass was on the other end of the mental illness scale with weight and self image. *shrug*

And something I did not know:

Elliot died in Flat 12, 9 Curzon Place (later Curzon Square), Shepherd Market, Mayfair, London. Four years later, The Who's drummer Keith Moon died in the same room, also aged 32 years

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Yep, I never knew how much they meant when a recipe calls for a "dash of cinnamon" or a "pinch of salt" or a "tad" of cocoa powder. I always thought it meant just an arbitrary wee bit, since cooking isn't exacting. My sister-in-law, an avid cook👩‍🍳, had these tiny spoons that told you exactly how much a dash, a tad, a pinch was. I just order a set for myself so I cooking will be more hit😋 than miss🤮.

I actually worked with a cook/chef that showed me what a 'pinch' was, and that a good cook/chef ALWAYS carries around a teaspoon to taste everything they were cooking. My wife said she thought that was why cooks/chefs always carried around a towel. 'To tell by color/smell.' *shrug*

 

[Doctor Q]

If I try to cook with guidance from Mrs. Q, she says to add "enough" of a certain condiment. I'm not sure if that's a metric or English measurement.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

If I try to cook with guidance from Mrs. Q, she says to add "enough" of a certain condiment. I'm not sure if that's a metric or English measurement.

But you follow directions. Good training... Happy wife, happy life, happy spouse, happy house...

 

[cosmichobo]

I will say that I can appreciate the "problem" with America changing to metric.

It's not just a matter of - from now on everything's going to be the more logical, easy to use system... it's all of the nuts and bolts that hold everything together, suddenly being replicated as decimals...

And as I learned late one night, on the side of the road, in inky blackness.. with a wheel bearing hub that had a mixture of metric and imperial... (!) it's hard to tell them apart sometimes.

BUT... that said... I sure hope the ISS uses metric!?

--
There was also a great big hairy spider in the above story... and a space-saver wheel that didn't want to inflate... and a dead dog... Really was an eventful last night of a 3 week holiday.

 

[throAU]

If I try to cook with guidance from Mrs. Q, she says to add "enough" of a certain condiment. I'm not sure if that's a metric or English measurement.

Yup.

Cook to taste. All recipes are a ROUGH guide.

 

[throAU]

I will say that I can appreciate the "problem" with America changing to metric.

Literally virtually every other country in the world, including all but one third world country managed to do this without imploding.

 

[Doctor Q]

Yup.

Cook to taste. All recipes are a ROUGH guide.

That's why it gives me trouble. I'm a software developer. If the boss told me to program the bank payment processing system so that "roughly $10" is charged or credited to the client's account, I'd have a hard time following that "recipe" too!

 

[Bobcat32]

The imperial system is about people… and people living life… with measurements people can mentally grasp their context of scale… In living said life… As all pro metric warriors state:”Metrics units of 1000 are mathematically blah blah blah…” Here’s the deal… A 1000 looks best only on paper and paper only. The real world difference between 69 to 70 to 71 degrees Fahrenheit can be and is astronomically huge in terms of comfort inside the home. The ability to articulate between much finer degrees of measurement with Fahrenheit is superior to Celsius. 1 versus 1.8 for every degree. Oh and don’t forget Kelvin too if you wanted more nonsense ways of measuring temperature. Should we also all drive on the left side of the road too? I think not. These are the same people who have two faucets for their sinks. One for hot and one for cold... Think about that.

 

[polyphenol]

The real world difference between 69 to 70 to 71 degrees Fahrenheit can be and is astronomically huge in terms of comfort inside the home. The ability to articulate between much finer degrees of measurement with Fahrenheit is superior to Celsius. 1 versus 1.8 for every degree.

Given it's geometric degree heritage, wouldn't it make sense to scale Fahrenheit into minutes rather than decimals as subdivisions? So that could report the halfway between temperatures as 69 degrees 30 minutes rather than 69.5.

And whether one degree, or some fraction of that degree (whether a decimal fraction or arbitrary), is a sensible unit for daily use depends on that daily use! I suggest that one degree, F or C, is perfectly adequate for our ovens, indeed, the nearest five degress might be better than the thermostat can manage! For reading the temperature of the cooling fluid in our engines. And many other purposes. But for chemistry laboratories, it is hopeless. Some purposes always require subdivisions and other don't.

If you like non-decimal units, just spend a few minutes thinking about the fact the many of them would be very awkward to use in calculations. How would you enter a weight in pounds and ounces into Excel? Indeed, possibly the biggest single reason for the UK changing from non-decimal to decimal currency was the need to use computers and, before them, calculators. UK had to use highly specialised £sd adding machines and shop tills. (There were many other reasons. And moves towards decimalisation started with the introduction of the florin an awfully long time ago.)

 

[dwellselectric]

Okay guys, this is probably my angry 1 AM self again posting here, but this is something that has been bothering me for a few weeks now. I am posting it here because I know this is a website primarily of American people, and I don't know who else to rant this about.


Okay, first off, temperature. We all know what the three useful temperature measurements are. Only one is used in daily use, it's Celsius, and across the entire world. It is the most logical of the three, 0° is water's freezing point, 100° is its boiling point, every semi-educated person knows that. Only THREE countries use Fahrenheit exclusively, and surprise surprise, the United States is one of them. Why? Why is that necessary? Why use a system that is absolutely outdated, makes no sense whatsoever (water freezes at 32° and melts at 212°? yeah, totally makes sense), that is used by basically no one else? Even, excuse me for this term, stubborn countries like the United Kingdom now use Celsius exclusively and primarily. Even Canada, and its influence of the country did not force it to keep Fahrenheit. It annoys me because every time someone says "it's 60° outside!" I have to google and convert it because that means nothing for me, and I don't communicate enough with Americans to bother learning it. I could get away with it if it was something that was used interchangeably in multiple countries, but it isn't, it's outdated.

Second, measurement units. On one hand, you have the most logical system on the planet, the metric system. Simple, each unit correlates with each other, and there are basic prefixes which simply divide or multiply the numbers by multiples of 10. And I will be blunt here, the imperial units are more intuitive and are still somewhat logical. However, once you want to do anything slightly more complex, it becomes annoying. You can't do anything with a system like that. You have to learn the massive amount of words and how each of them correspond with each other. Imagine instead of having to use Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, you would instead use Floppies, Discs, Drives, and Servers. It seems like the logical option, but they do not work together well at all and you gotta remember all of that crap. Once again, only the United States along with two other small countries exclusively use this system. In fact, when I thought that the United Kingdom was responsible for the same thing, it turns out it's technically the main measurement system of today (even though many people still use the other one), so I've actually gotta give them credit for having the guts to defy a traditional system. Every commonwealth country has adopted the SI, even if some like Canada still offer it occasionally. Seriously, why do this? Sure, I can deal with that, it's not like it's stupid or anything, but NOT when it's officially only used in a SINGLE GODDAMN COUNTRY (I'm excluding minor countries here because they are usually very small and have very little influence on the rest of the world).

Finally, this one pisses me off so much I just want to die. The date system. The entire world uses one or the other, either a DD/MM/YYYY system (common in European countries), either a YYYY/MM/DD system (common in East-Asian countries and some other places). Both are perfectly fine, as they represent a proper level of importance. What is NOT fine is when a single country just comes to troll everybody and bring a MM/DD/YYYY system, which completely messes up the order of the dates. The month, then a small part of the month, and then the year which the month takes place in? WHAT? How does that make any sense? WHY IS THAT NECESSARY? WHY THE ILLOGICALITY? I can bear with a January 1st, 2016 date system because it is closer to being a feature of the language, but not when it's a purely written form! At least use YYYY/MM/DD if you want to keep the M/D part! Seriously!


Okay, I understand that this was a bit blunt. But I can't accept that. I can't accept a country where there are people so lazy to adopt systems that are, by far, much more convenient than whatever is present, especially considering we are in 2016 and no improvement has been made to this date. And not to mention I'm sure there will be some idiots defending this system saying that "we are not sheeple to follow other people like that!". Well, uh, then you're sheeple to your own ****ing community. Any thoughts? Sure, you may call be brainwashed if that's what you believe, but I'd just like to point out that even though I grew up in a 24h system and I completely switched to 12h. And now I'm (partially) back at 24h. During this whole time, I barely spent any time outside. How exactly can you prove this against me if that's your intent? Anyway, any reasonable and non-biased explanations and/or defenses? Thank you.

You have to much time on your hands to worry about little things like this

 

[polyphenol]

You have to much time on your hands to worry about little things like this

Time and angles - two major non-decimal scales!

Let's face it, even where the USA has adopted a decimal system, as in their currency, it is so very common to read references to nickels, dimes and quarters rather than the number of cents which causes many of us, those not regularly handling USA currency, to have to pause and decipher what is meant.

 

[Euroamerican]

^----What? We don't list prices like 1 dollar, 3 nickels.... We list prices like $1.15

Pray tell what is so much more difficult, in a comparison example, between US currency and the Euro?

 

[polyphenol]

^----What? We don't list prices like 1 dollar, 3 nickels.... We list prices like $1.15

Pray tell what is so much more difficult, in a comparison example, between US currency and the Euro?

I don't use the euro either!

But the difference is the way that names of US coinage have percolated and are used often in preference to numbers in text - novels, journalism, social media.

The UK had similar with its enormous range of names for various coins - tanner, bob, florin, half a crown, sovereign, etc. Utterly meaningless to most who live outwith the UK. (Or, now, are significantly younger than me.) But they represented intermediate amounts outside and in addition to decimal values.

 

[throAU]

That's why it gives me trouble. I'm a software developer. If the boss told me to program the bank payment processing system so that "roughly $10" is charged or credited to the client's account, I'd have a hard time following that "recipe" too!

Try actually tasting your food as you cook it and experiment with how adding ingredients affects it.

I used to be like you, and then the gf drummed this into me.

I don't even look at recipes any more, I have a few things I can cook and go by taste/look/etc. I don't measure.

 

[R.T.J.]

garirry I can tell you do not live in the U.S. because that would be the least of your worries/ disappointment here. I moved to the U.S. and next year I will be moving to Spain. ​

 

[ApfelKuchen]

2021- My impression is that metrics has found it’s way into US manufacturing and can be found in the grocery store packaging, and I would not be upset, if we converted to metric distances, but my impression is no one wants to spend the money and I’ll always prefer miles to clicks. And I’ll always much prefer my teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups while cooking. Milliliters sounds too sterile, non-memorable, and laboratory like.

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Would you rather drink a cup of tea or a 237ml of tea?
Would you rather add a teaspoon or 5ml of salt?
The English system is much friendlier and memorable for recipes you can remember.

That table distorts kitchen realities. The Approximate Conversion column would be thrown out in favor of more convenient metric proportions - 473 mL would be rounded to 500 mL, 237 mL would become 250 mL, etc.

Recipes, regardless of the measurement system, tend to round-off to convenient proportions - two parts of this, one part of that, one-half part of the next - hence specifying a half-cup rather than 3 or 5 oz. While my measuring cups have 1/3 and 2/3 cup markings, nearly no recipe calls for those - halvsies tend to rule the kitchen. Except in rare cases where chemistry matters, precise measurements (down to the 1/4 tsp or 1 mL) are rarely necessary. The flavor intensity of ingredients is variable, our individual senses of taste are variable, flavoring extracts tend to be diluted in order to make them easier to measure and mistakes less critical... Precision is useful for duplicating the results of a recipe, but precise duplication is nearly impossible anyway, and variation is the spice of life.

There's plenty of romance and familiarity to teaspoons, cups, etc., but where is the romance in ounces or 1/4 teaspoons? Can you even begin to approximate 1/4 tsp using an actual, rounded-bowl teaspoon - no, you need a purpose-made 1/4 tsp measure to do it.

As a kid I was into both cooking and photography. Recipes were in Imperial, darkroom chemicals were measured in Metric (concentrates to be diluted - a 1:10 dilution was easier to do in Metric than Imperial). So I've been using both systems for a long time. I'm more fluent in one than the other, but otherwise, no big deal. If I lost all my Imperial kitchen gear tomorrow I'd start working in Metric without a hitch. I'd move from quarts to liters as the basis of most measurements. The finished recipes will be somewhat greater in volume, but since proportions matter more than absolute quantities, it'd be a piece of cake (so to speak).

The bottom line, regardless of what system of measure we use, is that what begins as very personalized points of reference (a particular teacup, a particular spoon, stick, stride, distance from wrist to elbow, etc.) eventually became standardized due to ever-broadening commerce (from local to regional, national, and international).

To the person who mentioned "cultural imperialism" I say, garbage! Internationalized commerce and manufacturing is simplified by using a common system of measurement. Period. It saves money. The French (who developed the Metric System) are sometimes accused of Cultural Imperialism, but this is really a matter of their having designed a better mousetrap. If it hadn't worked well (better than a world full of localized, less logical systems of measure), it would not be what it is today.

 

[Huntn]

That table distorts kitchen realities. The Approximate Conversion column would be thrown out in favor of more convenient metric proportions - 473 mL would be rounded to 500 mL, 237 mL would become 250 mL, etc.

Recipes, regardless of the measurement system, tend to round-off to convenient proportions - two parts of this, one part of that, one-half part of the next - hence specifying a half-cup rather than 3 or 5 oz. While my measuring cups have 1/3 and 2/3 cup markings, nearly no recipe calls for those - halvsies tend to rule the kitchen. Except in rare cases where chemistry matters, precise measurements (down to the 1/4 tsp or 1 mL) are rarely necessary. The flavor intensity of ingredients is variable, our individual senses of taste are variable, flavoring extracts tend to be diluted in order to make them easier to measure and mistakes less critical... Precision is useful for duplicating the results of a recipe, but precise duplication is nearly impossible anyway, and variation is the spice of life.

There's plenty of romance and familiarity to teaspoons, cups, etc., but where is the romance in ounces or 1/4 teaspoons? Can you even begin to approximate 1/4 tsp using an actual, rounded-bowl teaspoon - no, you need a purpose-made 1/4 tsp measure to do it.

As a kid I was into both cooking and photography. Recipes were in Imperial, darkroom chemicals were measured in Metric (concentrates to be diluted - a 1:10 dilution was easier to do in Metric than Imperial). So I've been using both systems for a long time. I'm more fluent in one than the other, but otherwise, no big deal. If I lost all my Imperial kitchen gear tomorrow I'd start working in Metric without a hitch. I'd move from quarts to liters as the basis of most measurements. The finished recipes will be somewhat greater in volume, but since proportions matter more than absolute quantities, it'd be a piece of cake (so to speak).

The bottom line, regardless of what system of measure we use, is that what begins as very personalized points of reference (a particular teacup, a particular spoon, stick, stride, distance from wrist to elbow, etc.) eventually became standardized due to ever-broadening commerce (from local to regional, national, and international).

To the person who mentioned "cultural imperialism" I say, garbage! Internationalized commerce and manufacturing is simplified by using a common system of measurement. Period. It saves money. The French (who developed the Metric System) are sometimes accused of Cultural Imperialism, but this is really a matter of their having designed a better mousetrap. If it hadn't worked well (better than a world full of localized, less logical systems of measure), it would not be what it is today.

You mean the French who have tried to outlaw English words by making new ones of their own?

 

[polyphenol]

You mean the French who have tried to outlaw English words by making new ones of their own?

Whereas Noah Webster tried to outlaw English spellings by making new ones of his own.

 

[Huntn]

Whereas Noah Webster tried to outlaw English spellings by making new ones of his own.

To address your before this post, no-one I know of who grew up with a TSP, TBS, CUP for cooking would willingly trade that for xx-xxx ML. The former is just too easy and easy to remember.

 

[polyphenol]

To address your before this post, no-one I know of who grew up with a TSP, TBS, CUP for cooking would willingly trade that for xx-xxx ML. The former is just too easy and easy to remember.

I grew up with teaspoons and tablespoons. But there were problems.

First, agreeing the actual size. In a typical drawer of mixed cutlery, the differences were sometimes very substantial.

Second, whether they are to be level, rounded or heaped. Some cookbooks tell you always to use one or other. But others leave you to decide for yourself or are inconsistent.


We did, though, use balance-type scales and ounce/pound weights rather than cups.

Nowadays, I use weight for almost everything - solid or liquid. Mostly, adding ingredients to a bowl or jug which is on a digital scale.

The other day I made some panna cotta. We get suitable cream in 300 ml pots. Would be silly pouring that into a cup.

 

[Gjwilly]