Hecto used to be popular in sweden until like 2000 or so, when it came to food. Especially candy and charcuterie were priced and ordered in “hekto” (the “gram” dropped in speech).
In Hungary “dekagram” is the default unit when buying food from actual humans at a deli counter or market. Asking for 30 deka of cheese sounds like a more human-scale number than asking for 300 grams.
Though it’s interesting that hecto would be even better for this, as we always use deka in 10s (or at least 5s), so we could just ask for 3 hectograms of cheese for an even more human-scale number :)
That’s pretty cool. Makes me think about speaking in ounces locally (NL). “3 ounce of cheese please” will get you 300g. They could ask if they cut it too fat: “mag het een onsje meer zijn?”/“Is it ok if it’s a small ounce more?”
Deka and Hecto are the metric system’s unloved children
Hecto used to be popular in sweden until like 2000 or so, when it came to food. Especially candy and charcuterie were priced and ordered in “hekto” (the “gram” dropped in speech).
In Hungary “dekagram” is the default unit when buying food from actual humans at a deli counter or market. Asking for 30 deka of cheese sounds like a more human-scale number than asking for 300 grams.
Though it’s interesting that hecto would be even better for this, as we always use deka in 10s (or at least 5s), so we could just ask for 3 hectograms of cheese for an even more human-scale number :)
That’s pretty cool. Makes me think about speaking in ounces locally (NL). “3 ounce of cheese please” will get you 300g. They could ask if they cut it too fat: “mag het een onsje meer zijn?”/“Is it ok if it’s a small ounce more?”
Hecto is very used in Italy with food “I’d like 3 hectos of ham, sir”
Deka is too small to be useful tbh, maybe it’s used with medicines or drugs?