lbs versus kgs.... I just don't get why everyone is still giving their babies' weights as lbs...??

[bergentulip]

... because I have never once been told my baby's own weight in anything but kgs, and have no idea what anyone is on about. This was in the UK, and as far as I am aware has been using the metric system for quite some time.

And the same goes for bottles of milk. Always in fluid ozs. I don't get it.

I don't think it is a generational thing, as everyone seems to use the imperial measurements on MN, but I have not a clue what everyone is going on about, and have to constantly check a measurement converter on 'tinternet!

So, someone, please explain this to me. What's the aversion to kgs, grams and litres/ ml ?

"Plus, we ARE European,.... it's not "we're going to Europe on holiday", we're already flippin' well there!"

I hate all this "we're European" nonsense. We're not. We are different to the French, Greek and Ukranians and it's sh*te to lump all nationalities together. Embrace the differences! don't go for homogeneous banality.

Oh, and does anyone say they're going to Europe?? I've always said and heard "I'm going to "

FWIW, I work in miles, metres, feet and centimetres and imperial weights

I'm 27 and work in imperial. If somebody tell me their baby weighs 3.5kg, it's comparable to them giving me the metric measurement of their 4th toe. Meaningless. If somebody has had a 7lb baby I can picture that size, compare it to my own baby, know where it is in terms of averages.

Not interested in piddling metric.

[oldfart]

Oh and I learnt it from all the other old farts that live here in the back end of nowhere.

It's probably because we know our own birth weight in lbs and ozs therefore we can compare.

Also, we know what is fairly heavy or light in lbs and ozs when it comes to birth weight.

I use metric for some things (struggling desperately to think what!) and imperial for others.

I prefer imperial for baby weights because I know what it means mainly because I learned to cook / bake in imperial. I know / can sense what an ounce or a pound is - I can visualise it in terms of butter and flour and can weigh by instinct in imperial and almost always get it right. I don't have that sense with metric - it's a mother's knee thing.

my HV always weighes Callum in kgs and the converts it 'into real money' for me lol

I learnt lbs and oz at home, when cooking
I still cook in lbs and ozs
I always got the impression that we were kind of forced into metric recently and nobody actually wanted to go
you know, you have to order in kg etc now at the market (well in theory anyway)

Agree the reason imperial is still in everyday use is because it's what our parents used when we were little. So presumably it will survive even with ds's generation.

I learnt metric at school but I think in imperial - metric was just for sums. I can judge a mile or a hundred yards or 10 stone or half a pound, no idea what any of those are in metric. Although I do temperature in centigrade because I know body temperature is 37c my geography teacher taught us '5 and 10 and 21 - winter, spring and summer sun' so it makes sense in a way that other metric stuff just doesn't. (Although who the hell decided to rename centigrade Celsius? The one metric system I understand went and changed on me!)

Isn't imperial originally derived from the human body - so an inch is roughly the length of a man's thumb or something, and a yard is a man's stride (could have the detail wrong here)? So it is intuitive in a way that metric just isn't.

And metric was something to do with Napolean so boo, hiss and who won the Battle of Waterloo anyway?

But metric is soooo much easier. I can't believe we are still clinging on to the imperial system.

We moved to 'Europe' last year and I'm now almost completely metric.

edam = Celsius was the man who "invented" centigrade; it is a bit of pedants thing, because centigrade just means 'divided into a 100 parts', not really specifying the start and finish points. So the international scientific bodies decided it should be called Celsius after its inventor, then at least the starting point would be set at 0 degrees. see here

If you want to be REALLY upset about it, there is also a system called Kelvin, where 0 deg C and 0 deg F (the same temp) are actually 273 deg kelvin!

I use both for different things

can't get my head around height in m and cm, or baby weights in kg AT ALL
or adult weights for that matter-am none the wiser if I hear someone weighs X kg

generally think of food weights in lb and oz too but prefer to measure liquids in ml as it seems more precise

and prefer centigrade for temperatures if talking ambient
fahrenheit if talking body temp

long distances have to be in miles, short can be cm but I also use inches too

confusing yes, but it makes sense to me...

as long as manufacturers keep producing scales/tape measures/rulers/measuring jugs with both on I guess people will be able to keep using both

no-one would want to go and ask for 454ml of beer in a pub would they...?

Its been offically decided by the government that we wont switch over to the new system exclusivy, so the Uk will probably always use a mixture of both metric and imperial.

I am in my twenties and I was taught the new way at school but use the metric for everything.

When the HV tells me my dd weight I ask her to convert it to lbs.

Distances, cooking, height, weather everyhting is metric to me because that is how I was raised at home and its hoe everyone around me commicates.

kilos etc means NOTHING to me. I cannot grasp it. If someone said 10kg, I would not be able to understand how much that was or have any 'feel' for it in my mind, iyswim.

I need feet and inches. I can do cm, (but I don't like it) but I cannot visualise anything in metres, I like miles not km, need stones, pounds and ounces, temperature I have no clue either way! 0 is freezing and 80 is a bloody hot day! I have no clue if I'm mixing them! . I like pints! But I can follow ml in a recipe.

I don't see why they have to keep changing stuff anyway.

i am a metric girl through and through
it entertains my butcher

molly, I think you might have meant you use imperial for everything, not metric? Only because you say you need your hv to convert to lb...

yeah, I vaguely remember Kelvin from school science, and Celsius being the bod who invented centigrade. I just don't see why normal people like me have to call it Celsius too. Centigrade made sense. Grumble, grumble, grumble bloody scientists why can't they just play with their atomic clocks and leave the rest of us happily muddling along with stuff that we can actually use in the real world?

yeah,what wigwambam said.i am old,and although i learnt imperial and metric at school for some reason i cant connect kg with human weights,although if i were to bake something(apart from killing the dc)i would have to use grams as i dont understand oz in that context.

yet i 'get' both mls and fluid oz's for measuring liquids.

I'm 26 and use lbs and oz
I always converted DD's weight back from kgs to lbs.
I think it is because I associate weight with stones and lbs, so lbs and oz make more sense to me

I'm pretty much completely metric. Only thing that I find easier in Imperial is adult heights - I know roughly what height someone is if they say 5 foot 6, for e.g., but find it harder in cm.

I don't think there's anything intuitive about Imperial at all though edam - it wasn't based on my body!

Thumbwitch - You know what I meant!

It is human though, even if not precisely calibrated to your own body measurements. Isn't a furlong something to do with the distance a horse could pull a plough in ye olden days or something?

Btw, if you know your height, you can measure rooms by spreading out your arms - at full stretch, from fingertip to fingertip is roughly equivalent to your height. I find this very handy when looking round houses I might like to buy. Or visiting someone's house and thinking 'ooh, I wonder if I could fit a loo under my stairs, how big is this one?'

Drama, should have been a grin at the end of that first line, I was being chatty, not lecturing, I hope!

I learnt metric in school and always found imperial confusing.

Since moving to Germany I can only use metric, imperial is much to complicated.

Metric is so much easier to count, if someone tells me they have lost 12 1/2 lbs and their starting weight was 10 st 3lbs I would take ages to work it out. If they told me in kgs then I would know immediately.

I can never remember how many lbs in a stone and how many inches in a foot/yard.

And it nothing to do with being European, it is just simpler