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Comment by angry_octet | Hacker News Reader

You win the NASA award for mixing metric and imperial in the most nonsensical way.

Most food labeling in the US is done this way. Gross measures (total volume, weight, etc) are in imperial while the nutrition facts are in metric. So milk will say, serving size 12 Oz, protein XX g.

> Most food labeling in the US is done this way. Gross measures (total volume, weight, etc) are in imperial while the nutrition facts are in metric. So milk will say, serving size 12 Oz, protein XX g.

Both net contents and serving size include metric measures.

"Food labels printed must show the net contents in both metric (grams, kilograms, milliliters, liters) and U.S. Customary System (ounces, pounds, fluid ounces) terms." [0]

"The serving size is expressed as a common household measure followed by the equivalent metric quantity in parenthesis." [1]

[0] https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocument...

[1] https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocument...

Except the metric serving sizes are very inconvenient unless you like to do long division in your head.

For example, I have two yogurts, one has 18g carbs per 170g serving, the other has 34 g per 227g serving. Quick, how much more carbs would I have if I ate the same amount?

It's a lot easier to tell if you know one is 6oz and the other is 8oz, or if the servings were designed in metric sizes (e.g. 150g and 200g).

At least in the UK and Europe, nutritional information is also always included per 100g - so it's easy to compare

Also in the colonies (Australia and New Zealand)

Quick, how much of that tub of yoghurt is a serving? Are you supposed to eat the whole packet of crisps at once or just some of them because it's a "family pack"? The per-serving information is extremely crude and only good for a rough glance. If you want to be more precise, use the per-100g values or whatever they use in the US.

Actually they're very useful if you're weighing your food with a scale. A good food scale lets you work in both metric and imperial units, and usually provides mass in grams.

It's not Imperial, it is US Customary. Fluid measures in particular have different definitions.

Most people in the US measure food in ounces, but carbs are almost always listed in grams. It's common enough that I didn't even think about it when I wrote it.

Yeah it was a bit unfair of me, just highlighting how difficult it is to get a sense of relativity when using different units.

I'm on a diet at the moment, tracking everything I eat. Someone who asked me how the diet was going told me last weekend "rodents eat grams. Humans eat ounces." I was left utterly speechless.

It's not that crazy. Canada is metric, but meat is usually labeled in ounces in restaurants.

Some products just has it by tradition, even in the most metric parts of the world like Scandinavia we still do wheel sizes and screen sizes in inches. It's a bit weird but I assume everyone buys camera lenses in mm too out of tradition.

I was really surprised when I went to Australia and found tv's sold with centimeter diagonals.

Oz weights on steaks is not used outside North America though I'm quite sure.

Canada is sadly perverted by its proximity to the States. I would have hoped dual labelling would have eroded imperial by now but no.

In this case is a sandwich an imperial unit?

Since it's Subway, yes, because they use the 6in/12in measurement in their stores worldwide AFAIK.

In France it's in 15/30cm, using imperial would sound incredibly weird and outdated.

Interesting. In UAE, it's 6/12 even though the country is 100% metric. Actually, it's not weird at all in my experience, because: 1) you get used to it, and 2) you can "see" the sub in front of you, so it doesn't need any conversion or anything.

Also in Germany.

For a while there, Subway claimed that "footlong" "was just a word" and not an exact measurement (and often a footlong measued less than 12").

'As part of the settlement, Subway agreed to institute practices for at least four years to ensure its bread is at least 12 inches long. The judge approved $520,000 in attorney fees and $500 for each of the 10 individuals who were representatives of the class, but no monetary claims were awarded to potential members of the class.

"It was difficult to prove monetary damages, because everybody ate the evidence," said Thomas Zimmerman, who was co-lead attorney for the class. Zimmerman said the attorney fees are being split among 10 law firms.'

Feb. 29, 2016

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/9dda14e5aeae4083aa331ebbd98af...

Only the lawyers win.

I think that's fair in a case like this. The lawyers are the ones who got Subway to change their practices. The 10 individuals wouldn't have been anyone who was specially hurt compared to the millions of other customers, just whoever bothered to spend the time signing up.

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