Joule is the metric system unit to measure the energy in food, however we still see calories being used everywhere, specially advertising and fitness influencers. Let’s stop this nonsense.
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Every packaging in the EU already includes kilojoules as unit for energy content of food.
You can’t force influencers to use them, you can only force companies and government bodies.
And in some cases, using metric would simply be worse in daily life.
Like using Kelvin instead of Celcius, meters per second instead of kilometers per hour, seconds in general instead of hours and days…
Fun fact: The fuel consumption of a car that needs 10 litres / 100 km (24 miles per gallon) could be simplified to 0.1 mm2 .
Is it metric? Yes. Is it practical? Not really.Relevant
xkcdwhat-if:Celsius, l/100km, and kph are still all metric.
You seem to confuse metric with SI units. And prefixes for the base units (like km instead of 1000m) do exist in the SI system.
Celsius is basically the same as Kelvin, it just puts 0 in a different place.
See Wikipedia:
By definition, the Celsius scale (symbol °C) and the Kelvin scale have the same magnitude; that is, a rise of 1 K is equal to a rise of 1 °C and vice versa, and any temperature in degrees Celsius can be converted to kelvin by adding 273.15.[1][5]
Most people that know what Kelvin is also know that is the same scale as Celsius, but that doesn’t mean its equally is convenient in everyday use.
The single best thing about the Celsius scale (and pretty mich the only thing that makes it better than Fahrenheit except of familiarity) is that 0°C is placed at the most impactful Temperature point for normal people.
I’m not forcing anyone, I’m trying to influence them to use joules instead
Your title says the EU should use Joules.
The EU already does use Joules for food.
Not sure what you mean. Influencers aren’t the EU.I mean EU in the widest sense including us, the EU citizens, including personal trainers and marketing people.
Also packages are made for different country so they need to contain the specific info
And in some cases, using metric would simply be worse in daily life.
No?
Like using Kelvin instead of Celcius
They are the same thing. They just use different starting points.
meters per second instead of kilometers per hour
Meters per second and kilometers per hour are both the same system, called the metric system.
seconds in general instead of hours and days
What are you on about? Seconds, hours and days are all part of the same system.
Fun fact: The fuel consumption of a car that needs 10 litres / 100 km (24 miles per gallon) could be simplified to 0.1 mm2
Actually yes. 10 L = 10 dm^3 = 10 000 cm^3. That means 10 L / 100 km = 10 000 cm^3 / 100 km.
To simplify further:
10 000 cm^3 / 100 km =
10 cm^3 / 100 m =
0.1 cm^3 / 100 cm =
0.001 cm^3 / 1 cm =
0.001 cm^2 =
0.1 mm^2
Is it metric? Yes. Is it practical? Not really.
It was already metric from the start before any mathematical simplification was done, so the metric system was definitely practical here.
Is the simplest mathematical form always the same as the simplest practical form? Definitely not, but that has nothing to do with the metric system.
If you’re gonna correct someone, be correct.
Your further simplification ignores that one of the units is cubed.What do you mean? I wrote cubed as ^3 throughout the entire explanation.
You edited your comment 16 minutes ago. When I wrote my reply you had your units wrong.
Yes. I eventually noticed my mistake and corrected it. 👍Thanks for pointing it out.
kilometers per hour are both the same system, called the metric system.
hour are not a metric unit though?
Hour isn’t the SI unit for time, but it is still accepted as a non-SI unit within the metric system.
https://metricsystem.net/non-si-units/units-whose-names-include-non-si-units/kilometre-per-hour/
Why? It is quite a round number. 1 calorie raises the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree
And how do you convert that to mechanical or electrical energy?
Why would I need the energy of a biscuit as electrical energy? In a case like that I guess that I’ll multiply by 4.whatever and get joules.
The energy needed to heat water also has no practical relevance in your everyday life, and calories are not inherently easier. If everything had always been in kJ, you would find it just as intuitive.
I know
Counter question: Why would I need to know how many grams of water I can raise the Temperature by one degree with the food I eat?
For the same practical reason I would need the mechanical energy of a carrot.
Wait wait, I got it! How many biscuits do I need to burn to boil the carrot?
i already do. a person requires 8 MJ of energy/day, that’s about 100 W on average.
Can you explain the maths on that?
I thought 1 Joule equals 1 Watt for 1 second. 8 MJ = 8000000 Ws. If you divide by 3600 (60 * 60), you get ~2222 Watt hours or 2.222 kWh.
There are 24h in a day. Divide your number by 24 and it will roughly match.
Thanks! I guess I was a bit confused there. 🙈
But calories are metric!
" the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 °C "
From Wikipedia:
However, the calorie is not part of the International System of Units (SI), and is regarded as obsolete,[2] having been replaced by the SI derived unit of energy, the joule (J),[9] or the kilojoule (kJ) for 1000 joules.
Calories are CGS units, which is a metric system.
What you want to argue is that they are not SI units.
Metric ≠ SI
Wikipedia disagrees with you
No, it doesn’t
relevant citation, highlighting by me:
The centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS or cgs) is a variant of the metric system based on the centimetre as the unit of length, the gram as the unit of mass, and the second as the unit of time.
Read that again
i do like kWh (1000 Watt * 1 hour) even though it’s not metric. because it’s useful in everyday life.
Every food should have Joules information besides calories. So it’s not really a law problem, just how most people use it.
Every food already have joules besides of calories.
Do you also want to use metric for time of day?
Calories for food is more understandable for people I think. But personally I welcome metric everywhere.
Calories are metric. This is like wanting people to switch to Kelvin instead of Celsius.
Good analogy. Exactly.
I’d be down for base 10 time.
By more understandable you mean they’re used to. They can get used to something else.
Thought I was in unpopular opinion for a second there. Sorry, I meant for a 1/60th of a minute.
Actually, the second is the base unit.
Which is particurlaly funny given that it was abolished when the metric system was created. During the revolution, we decided we would have decimal time instead of those ancient babylonian units. It was reverted a few years later, but the metric system was originally designed for having 100k seconds per day
I didn’t claim it isn’t. 🤔
