Comments on: Fixed package sizes to remain for 5 years – EU compromise

By: David

David — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:51:04 +0000

Packaging of foods and drinks should be in rational amounts only. Why do we need things like 454 g or 907 g? These are ridiculous amounts based on outdated imperial measures that are no longer used.
Wine, for example, has been a rational fixed amount for a long time, at 750 ml.
If packaging should be in fixed amounts only, let it be rational metric sizes only, such as 500 g, 1 litre, 500 ml, 250 ml, 1 kg, etc.

If I buy honey from a UK company it is usually 454 g, but if I buy manuka honey from New Zealand, it is 500 g, a rational and logical size.

Also recipes should be rational and sensible, that appear on packets, and use metric only. One recipe on a packet of vege mince (the packet was a silly size of 454 g) stated that it needed 227 ml of water. This is an odd amount, but even odder was that it also had “(half a pint)” after it, even though half a pint is 284 ml. The product had only a UK company address on the back. Other imperial equivalents were mostly wrong as well. But use such an overly accurate amount of 227 ml which bears no relation to anything?

Packaging should only be allowed to use rational metric measures, no imperial, and no silly sizes.

By: Dave Brown

Dave Brown — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:15:06 +0000

Surely standard pack sizes are our friends â€“ we just have to get rid of the ridiculous ones. If there were no standard sizes, our supermarkets would revert to selling fruit juices and other products in 568 ml packs as they do with milk.

By: Jessica Grimm

Jessica Grimm — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 10:18:13 +0000

Try bake a Chrstmas stollen with a German recipe which requires 200 gr of butter. Upon opening the butter produced for the English market, the weight marks indicate 55 gr! Happy days!

By: Alex Bailey

Alex Bailey — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:24:16 +0000

The package sizes we areÂ lumbered with are a constant annoyance to me! My favouriteÂ Bolognese sauce comes in 320 g jars with instructions to use 225 g of mince beef. Pre-packaged meat at most supermarkets is now generally in units of 250 g but they still insist on using approximated imperial conversions! A quick look through the kitchen cupboard found several items with this problem.

There also seem to be enough brands brave enough to sell milk in proper metric quantities that I’m certain that nobody would really be too upset if the 568 ml supermarket sizes and the doorstep pint actually did go away – except for the dairies who would have to buy new bottles and the newspapers who clearly have nothing better to print!

And as to beer… I’ve given up trying to dissuade my step-son from buying me novelty pint beer glasses for Christmas! The last one was branded “Guinness”. Odd, because Dublin is now metric, and even in the UK you can’tÂ buyÂ GuinnessÂ by the pint unless you go to the pub… and I’m not about to start taking my own glasses there!