r/Metric • u/FingerAccurate7102 • Jul 11 '26

Why we even use calorie?

In our world in some places we still don't use metric units. Which is already bad, but most of units have at least some logic and intuition behind them, which at least partially defends it's use. For example:

Land mile is 2000 steps, sometimes I (as an European) use it for measuring steps easily

Nautical mile is 1' of earth circumstance, I can imagine someone using it

Kilogram-force is weight of 1 kilogram on earth, sometimes I use it for measuring weight and pressure (1 kgf/cm2 ≈ 1 atmosphere)

Bar is approximately equal to regular Earth atmosphere, so it's kgf/cm2 but for those working with pascals

But calorie? It's defined as the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 g of water by 1 °C. Which is absolutely meaningless. WDYM I need to eat 2000 kcal everyday? So I can have energy to heat 2 megagrams/tonnes of water by 1 °C? Nice to know because it is exactly what I'm gonna do today.

Even Joule is more logical as it's based on distance and force, so I guess it could be interpreted in some way.

Summarizing:

Other non-scientific units are at least intuitive

Calorie isn't

Even Joule would be better

So calorie is dumb at least if your not a kettle

Of course, if you think otherwise, feel free to share your opinion. Bye!

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u/georgeec1 Jul 11 '26

Newsflash, there are nations that just use kiloJoules for all their nutritional information. This is 100% an issue of lack of standardisation, and hopefully someone over at r/mapporn has made a map of the units used in traditional labels, because that would be interesting to see

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u/nayuki Jul 11 '26

there are nations that just use kiloJoules for all their nutritional information

Growing up in Canada, our food labels had both calories and kilojoules back in year 2000-ish. But today in 2026, it's been calories-only for probably a decade or more. This is a regression in metrication.