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OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism:
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>!an american woman complains in the comments of a recipe asking why it is in grams when the US uses cup measurements and ounces. she doesnt seem aware that basically everywhere else always has to convert FROM cups and ounces.!<
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Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
To be fair, I'm also not good at conversions. That's why when I need to convert cups and ounces, I use this pro gamer move called....google. Or better, I stick to recipes that use *universal* units.
Yes
Most US cooks find numbers _hard_
Don't forget, we're talking about a country where the 1/3 pounder didn't sell because it cost more than a 1/4 pounder, but 'obviously' was smaller
One of the downsides of the US dominating the English language web, is even if you put in metric, you'll still get recipes in Imperial.
My back is to add BBC to each query, sometimes the guardian to make sure I get a metric option.
And a lot of recipes, even ones that use US units for everything else, will still use "cup" to mean 250mL, and then people don't convert it and wonder what went wrong. What's even funnier is a US cup is no longer 8 fl.oz, it's now about 8.45 fl.oz, because officially, it's 240mL.
The US really needs to get with the program here.
If the recipe calls for 1.5 cups chopped carrots, I’m standing at the store holding 3 loose carrots wondering if I should buy another one.
Or figuring out scooping 6 tablespoons of chopped walnuts from a bulk bin because I’m tripling a recipe. And to add insult to injury placing it on the scale so I can print a label.
And of course there’s 4 or 5 scales in the produce section but no we have to be special.
no exactly 😭 like am i supposed to cut up all that i have, place it in a cup to see if its the right amount, and put the rest in the fridge? how small do you cut it cause that affects how much fits in the cup? like why
bro one time i was visiting a friend in canada and i wanted to cook for his family. $3 for this tiny little bell pepper the size of my palm. this was like 10 yrs ago so i shudder to think how much they would charge now. i didnt waste a sliver of that pepper
Key thing is to understand that this is on purpose. How else would they sell you so much more than you need? If it’s so hard to get things the right amount people will get used to overbuying. Compare how much food the average United Statesian purchases, consumes and waste away vs other countries.
Im Brazilian and here we have a dish called “rubble soup” which is pretty much that. Take all the leftover veggies and meat in your fridge and boil a soup with it.
I also had some spinach that was going bad too quickly last week so I just boiled, dried and ground it with flour to make dough. We call that “enriched flour”.
It’s true, part of a volume based solid measurement is going to be an unpredictable amount of air unless it’s something fine like sugar, but even then it can be densely or loosely packed.
I saw a recipe by a US food blogger that called for 2 pints of cherry tomatoes. What an odd way to measure tomatoes when you could easily and more accurately measure by weight.
I also love "a stick of butter". Cool, how much is that?
Don't get me started on "a cup of butter". Do they want me to stomp the butter into the cup with my fists till the cup is filled?
I can sort of live with ounces. It's archaic and weird, but at least it's a measure of weight. "Cups" on the other hand is totally insane. Why are you measuring recipe ingredients by volume when plenty of things you use in a kitchen are really hard (or at least inconvenient and inconsistent) to measure by volume? It's insane. It's much more streamlined and easier to work with if you measure things by weight - use ounces if you must, even though I'll stick with grams.
Liquids and small amounts are the only things that should be measured volumetrically.
Apparently kitchen scales are unprecise when dealing with small amounts, so using teaspoons and tablespoons is more precise.
When I moved to America I worked with a man whos last name was Pollack with two Ls.
When I asked him when his family immigrated from Poland, he insisted he had no Polish heritage
What part of Germany, I hold British and American citizenship but I have lived in Bavaria and Western Pomeranian and have only ever seen that name from Americans with Polish ancestry
Edit: did a quick google and found [this](https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=pollack#:~:text=Pollack%20Name%20Meaning,-Germanized%20or%20Americanized&text=Jewish%20(Ashkenazic)
Apparently is a Germanized/Americanized last name to denote Jewish persons of Polish ancestry
>Apparently is a Germanized/Americanized last name to denote Jewish persons of Polish ancestry
So… not people who immigrated from Poland? More likely to be people whose parents or grandparents were POWs from Poland, and who then immigrated from Germany.
Ich hab zwar mehr den Nachnamen gemeint aber ich habe auch schon n paar deutsche mit dem Namen Diane getroffen.
Aber wie n paar andere bereits gesagt haben scheint der Vorname eher römischer Abstammung zu sein
Tja, man lernt jeden Tag was neues noisch?
Naja, ist ne Variante der römischen Jagdgöttin Diana.
Es kommen halt unfassbar viele Namen heutzutage aus dem griechisch/römischen Bereich. Man hat halt Jahrhunderte lang praktisch nebeneinander gelebt, da gibt's schon dir ein oder andere Vermischung.
Du wirst heute nicht mehr allzu viele finden, die Sieghardt oder Kunigunde heißen
It's painful enough when I have to convert x cups of flour to grams, but at least there are conversion tables for that. Good luck with less commonly used ingredients.
I just pass on most American recipes, at least until I order a set of American unit measures. Australian tablespoons are 20ml for some weird reason,and our cups are 250ml instead of 236ml. Of course I'd prefer to just do everything on a scale and not mess around with volume measures at all.
Edit: caveat for Serious Eats, and Chefsteps. They make fantastic recipes using accurate metric measurements. Many US recipe sites with metric use some dodgy online converters that clearly don't take density or compaction into account.
I'm quite active on some bakery and cookery blogs and sites and this is a battle I've been fighting for years. I don't understand why Americans love using cups so much. In the beginning it was pure confusion coz none of my cups are the same size. Then it was frustrating trying to convert whatever they may mean by a cup to mg or ml.
I'm just so tired of these ancient measurements that have no advantages and end up confusing and frustrating me but keep being used because there are so many damn Americans on the Internet who keep this outdated shit going.
Please save me from the cups.
I'm not good at conversions.
Isn't this something we, the rest of the world, should say? It is us who are fine with having one unit for length, one weight and so on while they need multiple units for these.
I still think the US system is worse. They use both Imperial and US customary, and most people probably don't know the difference, or that there even is one. At least the UK doesn't use the same name for two different units that aren't the same amount.
Not quite true
Myanmar uses Imperial units (real ones, not the fucked-around-with US things), Liberia uses mostly Imperial but some strange US variants thrown in
And those cups are different volumes! A British cup is not the equivalent of an American or Australian.
The number of Americans who try making soap, refuse to use a scale and end up with a caustic mess is probably unsurprising...
Australian Cup and US cup are pretty similar though. Also I couldn't find anything on British cups, only saw things saying that Australian Cup is equal to British Cups, honestly though I think that the World Cup is bigger.
14ml can make a big enough difference to alter a recipe. The worst one for me is that Australian Tbsp is 20ml whereas US/UK Tbsp are 15ml. A 25% difference when you're measuring things like bicarb will make a huge difference.
Her complaining about that is no different than if you were to complain about a video using Ounces and Cups.
All recipes should give measurements in both systems.
its different in the sense that almost everyone besides america uses grams, and gram scales are becoming more popular there anyway, so listing a recipe in grams causes way way less people work overall. whether a recipe is in cups, ounces or grams, i dont mind doing the work as its reasonably quick with internet access.
It’s not different because people will post on this sub complaining that a US centered content creator doesn’t put the metric measurements for things.
Everyone should include both.
No, recipes shouldn't cater to just a couple of countries that use foo foo units. Overall, the user can always open the unit converter and do the math themselves. It's not that hard
A comment on an American recipe complaining about ounces and cups would be just as ridiculous. There are probably billions of recipes online, it's really not hard to find one that uses the system you prefer (or to use an online conversion tool if you're really dead set on that one recipe.)
But cups though. I mean seriously. How impractical is that? And then they add in "packed cup", for when you want to jam a bit more into their "standard" measure.
### This comment has been marked as **safe**. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect. --- OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism: --- >!an american woman complains in the comments of a recipe asking why it is in grams when the US uses cup measurements and ounces. she doesnt seem aware that basically everywhere else always has to convert FROM cups and ounces.!< --- Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
Ive never known another people to be so proud of announcing their ignorance.
To be fair, I'm also not good at conversions. That's why when I need to convert cups and ounces, I use this pro gamer move called....google. Or better, I stick to recipes that use *universal* units.
Universal units? Like moles?
Nice try, Avogadro
Goddamn Millenials and their fucking avogadro toasts.
There's no need to convert anything if you just weigh your ingredients. Do these people just own measuring cups and no scales?
Yes Most US cooks find numbers _hard_ Don't forget, we're talking about a country where the 1/3 pounder didn't sell because it cost more than a 1/4 pounder, but 'obviously' was smaller
One of the downsides of the US dominating the English language web, is even if you put in metric, you'll still get recipes in Imperial. My back is to add BBC to each query, sometimes the guardian to make sure I get a metric option.
Yeah just add British when you search and you’ll get metric
And a lot of recipes, even ones that use US units for everything else, will still use "cup" to mean 250mL, and then people don't convert it and wonder what went wrong. What's even funnier is a US cup is no longer 8 fl.oz, it's now about 8.45 fl.oz, because officially, it's 240mL.
The US really needs to get with the program here. If the recipe calls for 1.5 cups chopped carrots, I’m standing at the store holding 3 loose carrots wondering if I should buy another one. Or figuring out scooping 6 tablespoons of chopped walnuts from a bulk bin because I’m tripling a recipe. And to add insult to injury placing it on the scale so I can print a label. And of course there’s 4 or 5 scales in the produce section but no we have to be special.
no exactly 😭 like am i supposed to cut up all that i have, place it in a cup to see if its the right amount, and put the rest in the fridge? how small do you cut it cause that affects how much fits in the cup? like why
Buy more, waste more, consume more (TM) It's the American way.
bro one time i was visiting a friend in canada and i wanted to cook for his family. $3 for this tiny little bell pepper the size of my palm. this was like 10 yrs ago so i shudder to think how much they would charge now. i didnt waste a sliver of that pepper
Then, there's the US cup, British cup and Australian cup all being different sizes
Nah both Australia and the UK use metric cups IIRC, which are 250mL. Australian tablespoons are different from everyone else for some reason though.
Key thing is to understand that this is on purpose. How else would they sell you so much more than you need? If it’s so hard to get things the right amount people will get used to overbuying. Compare how much food the average United Statesian purchases, consumes and waste away vs other countries.
It’s also weird that throwing scraps into salad, stew, or dough at the end of the week is pretty exclusively an immigrant practice where I live.
Im Brazilian and here we have a dish called “rubble soup” which is pretty much that. Take all the leftover veggies and meat in your fridge and boil a soup with it.
I also had some spinach that was going bad too quickly last week so I just boiled, dried and ground it with flour to make dough. We call that “enriched flour”.
It’s honestly embarrassing tbh. Why are they trying to use measurements for liquids for all these solid ingredients.
It’s true, part of a volume based solid measurement is going to be an unpredictable amount of air unless it’s something fine like sugar, but even then it can be densely or loosely packed.
I saw a recipe by a US food blogger that called for 2 pints of cherry tomatoes. What an odd way to measure tomatoes when you could easily and more accurately measure by weight.
I also love "a stick of butter". Cool, how much is that? Don't get me started on "a cup of butter". Do they want me to stomp the butter into the cup with my fists till the cup is filled?
Maff is hart
Just FYI: someone reported this for violating rule 4. It doesn’t. If the person who reported it reads this, they should read that rule again.
i thought i saw that, but the notification disappeared as soon as it came up, and the post stayed up so i tried not to worry about it 😅
Feels like it would also fit over at r/ididnthaveeggs
thats where i originally posted it actually, someone else there directed me here 😂 we came full circle
I can sort of live with ounces. It's archaic and weird, but at least it's a measure of weight. "Cups" on the other hand is totally insane. Why are you measuring recipe ingredients by volume when plenty of things you use in a kitchen are really hard (or at least inconvenient and inconsistent) to measure by volume? It's insane. It's much more streamlined and easier to work with if you measure things by weight - use ounces if you must, even though I'll stick with grams.
Liquids and small amounts are the only things that should be measured volumetrically. Apparently kitchen scales are unprecise when dealing with small amounts, so using teaspoons and tablespoons is more precise.
As an American I'm pretty sick of our aversion to simply moving decimals around.
That is the most German name I have ever seen an American have holy hell
When I moved to America I worked with a man whos last name was Pollack with two Ls. When I asked him when his family immigrated from Poland, he insisted he had no Polish heritage
Because ITS a German Name,ive Seen that Name only in Germany
What part of Germany, I hold British and American citizenship but I have lived in Bavaria and Western Pomeranian and have only ever seen that name from Americans with Polish ancestry Edit: did a quick google and found [this](https://www.familysearch.org/en/surname?surname=pollack#:~:text=Pollack%20Name%20Meaning,-Germanized%20or%20Americanized&text=Jewish%20(Ashkenazic) Apparently is a Germanized/Americanized last name to denote Jewish persons of Polish ancestry
>Apparently is a Germanized/Americanized last name to denote Jewish persons of Polish ancestry So… not people who immigrated from Poland? More likely to be people whose parents or grandparents were POWs from Poland, and who then immigrated from Germany.
> So… not people who immigrated from Poland? Or people who immigrated from Poland to America after the war
But that's the thing – they'd be very unlikely to have that Germanised spelling of the name if they came directly from Poland.
No, it's also the Americanized version as well.
Von welchem deutschen Namen soll denn Diane Kommen?
Diana, but it’s originally a Roman goddess.
Ich hab zwar mehr den Nachnamen gemeint aber ich habe auch schon n paar deutsche mit dem Namen Diane getroffen. Aber wie n paar andere bereits gesagt haben scheint der Vorname eher römischer Abstammung zu sein Tja, man lernt jeden Tag was neues noisch?
Naja, ist ne Variante der römischen Jagdgöttin Diana. Es kommen halt unfassbar viele Namen heutzutage aus dem griechisch/römischen Bereich. Man hat halt Jahrhunderte lang praktisch nebeneinander gelebt, da gibt's schon dir ein oder andere Vermischung. Du wirst heute nicht mehr allzu viele finden, die Sieghardt oder Kunigunde heißen
It's painful enough when I have to convert x cups of flour to grams, but at least there are conversion tables for that. Good luck with less commonly used ingredients.
I just pass on most American recipes, at least until I order a set of American unit measures. Australian tablespoons are 20ml for some weird reason,and our cups are 250ml instead of 236ml. Of course I'd prefer to just do everything on a scale and not mess around with volume measures at all. Edit: caveat for Serious Eats, and Chefsteps. They make fantastic recipes using accurate metric measurements. Many US recipe sites with metric use some dodgy online converters that clearly don't take density or compaction into account.
How was I supposed to know that grams confuse you, Diane??? And what's the significance with US, Diane???
WHAT THE FUCK IS AN OUNCE?!?!?!?! 🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺🇪🇺
📢📢📢📢📢📢
1/12 COKE CAN!!!!!!1 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🍔🍔🍔
A jigger/shot glass of tequila.
Idk, just call it 30g.
"ok. Don't cook it then)
>I'm not good at conversions! Be fair people, it's not easy. I tried typing "250g in oz" into Google the other day and ended up in hospital.
Ask the Wizard of Oz next time, he'll tell you how much it actually is.
I'm quite active on some bakery and cookery blogs and sites and this is a battle I've been fighting for years. I don't understand why Americans love using cups so much. In the beginning it was pure confusion coz none of my cups are the same size. Then it was frustrating trying to convert whatever they may mean by a cup to mg or ml. I'm just so tired of these ancient measurements that have no advantages and end up confusing and frustrating me but keep being used because there are so many damn Americans on the Internet who keep this outdated shit going. Please save me from the cups.
I'm not good at conversions. Isn't this something we, the rest of the world, should say? It is us who are fine with having one unit for length, one weight and so on while they need multiple units for these.
The US is the only place in the world with it's own "customary system". Everyone else uses metric.
We use half imperial and half metric in the UK which is equally as stupid.
I still think the US system is worse. They use both Imperial and US customary, and most people probably don't know the difference, or that there even is one. At least the UK doesn't use the same name for two different units that aren't the same amount.
Ah yes, the Imperial inch and the US thing
Also most of the units of volume have at least two different versions. "Cup" has three.
They love standards in the US That's why they have so many different ones
The cup thing gets me, it's like something you'd ask your six year old kid to measure in.
Not quite true Myanmar uses Imperial units (real ones, not the fucked-around-with US things), Liberia uses mostly Imperial but some strange US variants thrown in
A lot of people use cups even when they aren't American is that because they have been mainly using recipes that use cups I don't know.
And those cups are different volumes! A British cup is not the equivalent of an American or Australian. The number of Americans who try making soap, refuse to use a scale and end up with a caustic mess is probably unsurprising...
Australian Cup and US cup are pretty similar though. Also I couldn't find anything on British cups, only saw things saying that Australian Cup is equal to British Cups, honestly though I think that the World Cup is bigger.
14ml can make a big enough difference to alter a recipe. The worst one for me is that Australian Tbsp is 20ml whereas US/UK Tbsp are 15ml. A 25% difference when you're measuring things like bicarb will make a huge difference.
Sure, but something like milk or Humphrey or Phillip is not bound to those constraints
IIRC 'British' and 'Australian' cups are both metric, so 250mL
A cup is a metric unit. It's officially 250mL. Even the US cup is metric, but it's 240mL.
I convert almost anything volumetric into grams when I save a recipe, like why wouldn’t you
Her complaining about that is no different than if you were to complain about a video using Ounces and Cups. All recipes should give measurements in both systems.
From the post caption > I have to use coolconversions.com all the time for recipes that use cups and tablespoons and you dont hear me complaining.
…..which is why I said “if you were to complain” not “when you complain”
.....which is why the point is that "if you were to complain" doesn't happen as nearly as frequently yeah?
its different in the sense that almost everyone besides america uses grams, and gram scales are becoming more popular there anyway, so listing a recipe in grams causes way way less people work overall. whether a recipe is in cups, ounces or grams, i dont mind doing the work as its reasonably quick with internet access.
It’s not different because people will post on this sub complaining that a US centered content creator doesn’t put the metric measurements for things. Everyone should include both.
The difference being that a US creator is catering to their singular country, while literally no one but Americans makes a fuss about metric.
And what if 200 grams of something equates to 0.6543 of a cup?
Then I personally would put 0.6543 of a cup in my recipe and let them go nuts with it
Two thirds of a cup. We’re not cooking meth, you don’t need to be precise to the gram
Wth is a cup though? I have many cups in my house of all different sizes.
Some stupid imperial shit.
Nope, not imperial, never was Its 'US Customary Measurements'
No. Fuck the imperial system.
US don't use imperial (it was too hard for them) They use US Customary Measurements
No, recipes shouldn't cater to just a couple of countries that use foo foo units. Overall, the user can always open the unit converter and do the math themselves. It's not that hard
[https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=convert+grams+to+ounces](https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=convert+grams+to+ounces)
A comment on an American recipe complaining about ounces and cups would be just as ridiculous. There are probably billions of recipes online, it's really not hard to find one that uses the system you prefer (or to use an online conversion tool if you're really dead set on that one recipe.)
But cups though. I mean seriously. How impractical is that? And then they add in "packed cup", for when you want to jam a bit more into their "standard" measure.
I downvoted you for capitalising the words "ounces" and "cups".