The FastDay Forum

And "navy beans"? What are they?

navy beans are small white beans.

Called navy beans because the US navy had them all the time. Also known as haricot beans or the beans in a tin of baked beans.

Don't forget cooking temperatures need to be in Centigrade, Fahrenheit and gas mark.

There are also issues measuring in cups, not just whether you translate it into volume or weight, but also with different size cups, the American cup is 237ml while Canada and Australia use a 250ml cup. Old recipe books can use an imperial 284ml cup, half an imperial pint.

Oh yes, and that is an imperial pint of 568ml rather than an American pint 473ml. I think their fluid ounces might be different.

Tablespoons can be different too, in Australia they are 20ml rather than 15ml.

Perhaps the simplest thing would be for each recipe to be have a metric translation grams, kilograms or tonnes and litres or millimetres, whatever its original form, cups, ounces, pinches, smidgens or tads.

I don't think we mentioned rapeseed oil which is canola in many other places: Canola comes from "Canadian oil, low acid" to convince consumers that this oil was safe to eat (which the original rapeseed oil was not, apparently). Originally a trademark, the term is now used in many countries (but not UK) for any low-erucic rapeseed oil.

UK rapeseed farmers made a big mistake not going with the change of name IMO!

All Australian food is labelled using kilo-joules (kj). Secondly, Dr Mosley's tv program and this site use "large" calories, actually kilo-calories. This means that
"600 calories" translates to (600 * 4.2) kj = 2,520 kj.
"500 calories" translates to (500 * 4.2) kj = 2,100 kj.

Average daily intake (non-fasting) should be 8,700 kj, according to the standard label on my oats.