Why do Brits still use stone as a measurement?
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I want to know why british cooking regards salt as an exotic spice.0
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I learned it the hard way. lol.RunRutheeRun wrote: »
I shall walk my days with a salt block in my pocket.
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British, and I'm all about the metric system here, I even convert miles on road signs to kilometres.0
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Listen, until you come across the hassle of weighing yourself in lbs but have your plates in KGs - which you then have to convert to see where you are against your US pals AND have to trail through all the 'cups' entries in the database to find one in Grammes (yes, yes I did spell it Grammes) then you leave us alone with our Stones. We like them! =D
Haha edit for spelling.0 -
I had a Gramme once, she died.Listen, until you come across the hassle of weighing yourself in lbs but have your plates in KGs - which you then have to convert to see where you are against your US pals AND have to trail through all the 'cups' entries in the database to find one in Grammes (yes, yes I did spell it Grammes) then you leave us alone with our Stones. We like them! =D
Haha edit for spelling.
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RunRutheeRun wrote: »
Why would you ask a butcher for only 100g of meat?
That's less than 4ounces, tinsy amount!
100g IS 4oz and its a reasonable amount for 1 person.
You're incorrect.
1oz = 28g
so 4x28 = 112g.
Sure, 4oz is a reasonable serving for 1 person - I'd be hungry but whatever.
But it makes far more sense to order half of a pound (or 227g) of meat so you can make 2 meals out of it.
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I had a Gramme once, she died.Listen, until you come across the hassle of weighing yourself in lbs but have your plates in KGs - which you then have to convert to see where you are against your US pals AND have to trail through all the 'cups' entries in the database to find one in Grammes (yes, yes I did spell it Grammes) then you leave us alone with our Stones. We like them! =D
Haha edit for spelling.
Bwahaha but
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Elsie_Brownraisin wrote: »I don't know why I'm being defensive, I'm of the age that I was only taught metric weights at school. I use kilos and grammes and had a rather embarrassing conversation with a butcher some years ago when I asked for 100 gm of mince.
We only decimalised our currency in 1971. You can't expect people to change so quickly - Google the 'metric martyrs' if you don't believe me.
I always found the currency so puzzling in older English novels. It made me happy that Plantagenet Palliser in those Trollope books was always on about reforming the currency system, as it certainly seemed to need it! Anyway, definitely don't be defensive, as we Americans of course do cling to the irrational English measuring system far more than you all do. We just never picked up stone for some reason.
It's so funny how hard it can be to learn a new system when you grow up with one. I think because I never really had an particularly strong intuitive sense of ounces it's been quite easy for me to start thinking of smaller measurements as grams, but for things like kg and km, I always have to be doing the math in my head to convert them to pounds and miles for the numbers to make sense to me (other than basic ones like 5K and 10K, but even then it's because I know the distance in miles).
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Why not use the metric system once and for all?
1 kilometer = 1,000 meters
1 meter = 1,000 millimeters or 100 centimeters
1 kilogram = 1,000 grams
1 gram = 1,000 milligrams
kilo: x1,000
centi: 1/100
milli: 1/1,000
Waaaaay easier to convert
No need to convert miles to yards or feet to inches or stones to pounds to ounces0 -
I weigh my food in gm, myself in lbs and my plates are in kg. English people are just messed up that way...0
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Seriously though, I just think we picked up the measurements that interest us from parents/grandparents.
I learned in metric at school but if I'm DIYing, I'll use inches because that's how my dad does it. I'm not interested in baking so I didn't really pick up on the ounces etc. and tend to use Grammes. And we use miles (I think it'd be too expensive and piss too many people off to change all the road signs to kilometres).
For weighing, if I said to a friend, family member etc. I weighed 146lb they would be clueless, 10 and a half stone - they know what I mean.
I'm sure I read on here that Canada has a similarly effed up system to us when it comes to measuring.0 -
Could be because a stone is actually a unit of weight, while pounds and kilograms are not.0
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I'm British and I do think in stones. I'd probably convert any lb weight to stone in my head to get a better grasp of how heavy it is.
However, when I go to the doctor and they ask me how much I weigh, they seem confused when I offer it in stone and I can't convert to kg in my head.0 -
just because we can!!! seriously it is what we grew up with (despite me being one when we technically switched to decimalisation)and because of that the weights mean something in our heads!! e.g for me I know that 11 stone is far too much, 10 stone a little too much and 9 stone where I would love to be. Babies now come in kg but still if converted I know a 7lb something baby is pretty average (from around 20 years ago) and that a 10lb baby would be pretty big!!.0
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Using stone for weight would be similar to only using yards for distance (no feet or inches), or saying "I'm 1 yard 34 tall" instead of 5'10".JazzFischer1989 wrote:Why do we use inches and feet instead of meters and centimeters like the rest of the world?
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herrspoons wrote: »We use both imperial and metric.
Because we're awesome.
We tried that and crashed a spaceship on mars.0 -
Oh, my gosh, this made me laugh. I knew the system was different than the rest of the world, but never even thought about the different cups, lol. That has to seem particularly nuts to someone who has moved here and has to learn it all. "Wait, a cup isn't a cup? The cup changes based on what you're measuring?!" That must seem wacky, lol.Elsie_Brownraisin wrote: »What about you yanks and your bloody cups, that change according to the substance you are measuring!?!
When I first committed to using the metric system, I tried to do it by converting. Didn't work. I had to just use it. Eventually, I got to the point where, for my purposes, I could guess equally well n either system. I could use both systems. I still had trouble converting, though. I knew 39.2 was a fairly high temp for a person, but I couldn't tell you that it was 102.5. If I was told either number, I'd know what it meant and felt like...I just couldn't convert.
To this day, I'm much better with knowing temps from 20-40 (69-104) than other temps, because I've had more experience with those.
But I picked it up much faster using it than trying to convert, if that makes any sense.
The stones thing...unless you have Brits telling you their weight and forgetting to convert it for you (like they ask for chips when they want fries, so you have to say, "Are those British chips or American chips?")...it's hard to pick up stones. But if you happen to be in the rare position of having British people saying "stone", it's the easiest of all to pick up...it's the same system.
It's really weird how you automatically say things in your own system when you use the same language. If you were speaking another language, you'd never forget to use the other terms, but when you speak (roughly) the same language, you forget and slip up. I bet the linguists have a word for that. 0
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