Going Metric: American Foods and Drugs Measure Up : Part 2

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

(Page 2 of 2)

Fortunately for them and for today's shoppers who did not learn metric in school, there are handy approximations between the old, familiar units and metric ones. (See box.) Although virtually all prescription drugs have long been dispensed and labeled in metric terms, consumers may need some extra help for a few OTC conversions. For example, a 5-grain aspirin tablet is 325 milligrams in metric terms.

Some vitamins are often rated in international units, but IU is a measure of biological activity, not weight or volume, so the congressional mandate for metric labeling doesn't apply. However, vitamin manufacturers that use IU designations are being pushed toward metric labeling by the U.S. Pharmacopeia (U.S.P), a private agency that works closely with FDA. Starting in July, any vitamin product claiming to meet U.S.P. standards and saying so on its label also has to disclose its content in metric terms.

Easy Does It

As anyone who has traveled abroad understands, metric is quite easy to get used to. It's based entirely on the decimal system — everything is divisible or multipliable by factors of 10. For example, a kilogram is 1,000 grams, a liter is 1,000 milliliters, a meter is 1,000 millimeters (or 100 centimeters) and a kilometer is 1,000 meters. Products sold by volume are in liters, those sold by weight are in grams, and those sold by length are in meters (or decimal multiples or fractions of them). No confusion there. Contrast these units with pounds for dry weight (16 ounces), quarts for liquid measure (32 fluid ounces — and fluid ounces aren't the same as dry ounces), yards at 3 feet or 36 inches each, and miles consisting of 1,760 yards or 5,280 feet. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, as the saying goes, to see that metric is actually more consistent than traditional U.S. measures.

And you don't have to be a master chemist to convert cookbook recipes to metric either. For "1 teaspoon" in an old-style recipe, read "5 milliliters (mL)," for "1 tablespoon" read "15 mL," and for "1 cup" of liquid read "250 mL." More and more cookbooks nowadays contain conversion tables — including the difficult and crucial one from Fahrenheit measurement of temperature to Celsius — and measuring cups are available marked in metric on one side and ounces-pint on the other.

Commenting that the metric system is easier and more logical than inch-pound, Commerce's Carver says, "but even if it wasn't we'd have to convert simply to be in step commercially with the rest of the world. Not to do so would be to continue to impose trade barriers on ourselves." With 25 million Canadians to the north and 85 million Mexicans to the south, all allied with us in the North American Free Trade Alliance (NAFTA) and with billions more customers worldwide subject to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), says Carver, "we have to go metric."

Survivors

Old ways die hard, to be sure, and there won't be a "metric police" patrolling the shopping malls, so it is reasonable to expect that some inch-pound units will survive in folk culture even after they disappear from formal commerce. The Australians are simon-pure metrists — except for their dogged adherence to "shouting a schooner" when they visit the local pub, a schooner being a large mug that Australian beer drinkers simply refused to give up when metric came in. Similarly, some older people in Germany refer to a Pfund when buying half a kilogram of some bulk product, a Pfund being an old measure equivalent to the English pound. Britain, now otherwise solidly metric, still sticks to miles on the highway and, in popular parlance, you still hear some Britons talk of their weight as being so many stone. (A stone is the equivalent of 14 pounds.) However, petrol (gasoline) is sold by the liter, spelled litre in the United Kingdom.

If traditionalists question the historic legitimacy of the metric system, they need only consider Thomas Jefferson's efforts to devise a coherent system of measurements for the fledgling United States based on multiples of 10. The United States was already a leader on the coinage front in the English-speaking world, having abandoned the old pounds-shillings-pence system that survived elsewhere well into the 20th century in favor of the more manageable 100 cents to the dollar. Jefferson, one of the brightest intellects of his time, had been a U.S. diplomat in Paris when the French metric system took shape and had been impressed by its logic and coherence. As Secretary of State in 1790, when President Washington asked him to prepare alternative sets of measurement standards for consideration by Congress, Jefferson was ready. One of the two proposals — reportedly Jefferson's preference — was based on multiples of 10, just like the metric system, but Congress did not adopt it at that time.

Fahrenheit Meets Celsius

Metric today is not only the lingua franca of commerce, but of science as well. Pick up any medical journal, for instance, and all the quantities you see in the text will be in metric. Patients are described as being so-many centimeters tall, weighing so-many kilograms, and having a body temperature of so-many degrees Celsius (37 C is the same as "normal" body temperature of 98.6 F).

The relationship between Fahrenheit and Celsius is, in fact, the only conversion that most consumers may need to use that is somewhat tricky. But even it can be mastered, according to Gloria Marconi, a Silver Spring, Md., illustrator whose husband, Ercole, often asks her to make baked goods from recipes in the metric system cookbooks he brought with him from his native Italy. How to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit for oven temperatures?

If your oven registers in Fahrenheit and the recipe tells you the baking temperature in Celsius, just multiply the Celsius number by 9 and then divide by 5. Add 32 to the result, and there's your Fahrenheit oven setting. (For example, if the cookbook calls for a Celsius setting of 220: 220 x 9 = 1980 – 5 = 396 + 32 = 428; 425 is close enough for your Fahrenheit oven setting.)

It's only human for Americans to be creatures of habit, but the inch-pound system habit has put us at a disadvantage with our competitors overseas and so has become a luxury we can no longer afford. The faster and more enthusiastically we embrace metrication, the more prosperous a nation we are likely to be. The Food and Drug Administration, with its product labeling requirements, is committed to do its part in this effort.

About the Author

www.fda.gov
FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.