this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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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 mm^2^ .
Is it metric? Yes. Is it practical? Not really.
Celsius is basically the same as Kelvin, it just puts 0 in a different place.
See Wikipedia:
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.
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.
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
Relevant ~~xkcd~~ what-if:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/
Celsius, l/100km, and kph are still all metric.
No?
They are the same thing. They just use different starting points.
Meters per second and kilometers per hour are both the same system, called the metric system.
What are you on about? Seconds, hours and days are all part of the same system.
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
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.
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/
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.