Bruce E. Arkwright, Jr Erie PA Linux and Metric User and Enforcer
I will only invest in nukes that are 150 gigameters away. How much solar energy have you collected today? Id put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we dont have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that. I wish I had a few more years left. -- Thomas Edison♽☯♑ Jun 14, 2012 06:39:04 AM, [email protected] wrote: =========================================== This was a nice surprise. I had never seen kilojoules on an American nutritional label before. This one, on a soft-metric 510 g box of H-E-B-brand corn flakes, is bilingual English-Spanish, and, alas, only shows the SI value under the Spanish terms (making kilojoules seem "foreign"). However, the fact that it's there at all, sharing the stage with kilocalories, with kilojoules as the primary unit, is delightful. Many English-Spanish nutritional labels only have kilocalories listed. Still, non-metric labeling persists even on Spanish labels, as indicated by the phrase "con 1/2 taza de leche desc[r]emada". I checked both American and Canadian nutrition labeling regulations, and though they are mostly identical (with Canada being slightly more hard-metric, of course), neither of them, as far as I could find, give provisions for or examples of labels stating the energy content of food in kilojoules. Regardless of the language of the label, whether it be English-French (Canada), English-only (US), or English-Spanish (US), the examples from both nations, shown on their websites and from personal experiences on both sides of the border, give only Calories. I could find little on Mexican nutrition labels, but the little I did find gave example labels in kilocalories only, though I have never personally seen a Mexican nutrition label that didn't also state kilojoules, so I'm not sure about the requirements for Mexico. Related thoughts: I imagine that, once the US labels switch from kilocalories to kilojoules, the percent daily values will be calculated based on 8 MJ and 10 MJ diets.Does it annoy anyone else that there are no spaces between the amounts of nutrients given and the unit symbols on these labels? It's no secret that, at least in the kitchen, the British are a lot more metric than Canadians. I assume this has to do at least somewhat with North American traditions of cooking by volume, and the rest of the world cooking by weight (except when Swedes use decilitres), and Canada's proximity to America. My little sister and I watched two cooking shows on TV today, Jamie's Meals in Minutes—I assume this is Jamie's 30-Minute Meals from Channel 4, merely retitled—from the UK, shown here on BBC America, and Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen from Canada, shown here on the Cooking Channel and Food Network. My sister and I have a habit/game of fist-bumping each other each time we hear a metric measurement mentioned on TV. The only non-metric I remember hearing on Meals—except for 5 mL teaspoons and 15 mL tablespoons, which I let slide, as they are the same, for all intents and purposes, worldwide except in Australia—was reference to "a little less than a[n imperial] pint", which is understandable given the British government's reluctance to eliminate the pint (though obviously not ideal); I thought of it merely as hidden-metric code for 500 mL. Other than that, oven temperature was given in degrees Celsius (though just stated as "degrees"; British ovens have been metric for decades, and Jamie's had "°C" engraved into it next to the temperature control). Amounts of dry goods were given only in grams. It was virtually the polar opposite on Bitchin' Kitchen. Oven temperatures were also given in "degrees", but referring to degrees Fahrenheit, the default for American and Canadian ovens*. Everything, even dry ingredient measurements, was given in cups and tea/tablespoons. With the exception of the 250 mL Canadian "metric cup", which is what I assume was used even though the quantity was given only as "a cup", the show could have just as easily been made in New York rather than in Montréal (bagel rivalry notwithstanding). Zach Rodriguez, an American who prefers cooking and baking by weight in metric**http://twitter.com/#!/metricamericahttp://twitter.com/#!/zachrodriguez P.S. I know I've ranted long enough, but I couldn't help but smile (and fist-bump my little sister) when I saw this commercial on TV; it's an ad for Kayak travel, and the man, traveling through Japan, asks for 12 kg of rice flour to pack into his briefcase. Yes, it takes place in Japan, so it's logical to use metric, but the joke is that the man "just doesn't think" when he travels, so, even without conversion to pounds, the company relies (and succeeds) on the American public knowing that 1. the amount of rice flour he holds in his hands is not that much 2. twelve kilograms is a lot of rice flour and 3. 12 kg of rice flour will not fit in his briefcase. There is no way that any American would think 12 kg has the same mass as, say, a domino because they're "unfamiliar" with the unit. The direct link to the commercial is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogILqUidZLA *The ovens at my mother's house are less straightforward about changing from Fahrenheit to Celsius than the oven at my father's house, but it's definitely possible on all of them. **I try to stick with metric-originating recipes, more often than not from Australia, but when I metricate North American recipes, since my scale rarely differs from these conversions by more than a few grams during the initial bake-it-by-volume-as-a-control phase, I generally use 1 cup of flour = 125 g, 1 cup of sugar = 200 g, 1 stick of butter = 125 g (even though this requires me to buy more butter since a 454 g box does not divide evenly; I figure it's much more convenient to the rest of the world, and I prefer hard-metric over soft. 113 g of butter looks weird), and 1 fluid cup = 250 mL, 325 °F = 160 °C, 350 °F = 180 °C, 375 °F = 190 °C, 400 °F = 200 °C, etc. I then test the newly-metricated-and-by-weight recipe, comparing to the original, make any final tweaks for taste and doneness. From then on, I only use the metric recipe.
