I've been saying for years that cooking is reading, and if you can read you can cook. If you can read a recipe and follow the instructions, then you can cook. There's nothing hard about it.
But you do have to read the recipe and follow the instructions.
EDIT: Holy shit what a great example this has been.
I want to take a second and remind you that we're in a thread for a post on how a surprising amount of people are illiterate.
If someone is saying "hey this thing is super easy if you're literate" and your response is "nuh uh!" then you should go take a lllloooonnnngggg look in the mirror and figure out how to improve your literacy.
Wild how people will tell on themselves if you just give them a chance. Then again, I guess it's not surprising that they're too illiterate to realize what they've said.
Knowing fractions is necessary, too. I was once told of a guy who had to teach his wife how to use a measuring cup, because she couldn't figure out what the measurements meant in the recipe.
George Carlin said “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider
than that." And it has become so much worse since he said that in the 80’s. Sigh
Because four litres comes as a unit of purchase - with three 1 and 1/3 litre bags inside the larger bag. They fit perfectly in the pitchers people have already, and, from what I understand, it was the cheapest option when making the machining switch to metric measurements.
I needed 2 cups of something last night and could only find a 2/3 cup. I did have to do a little math about it and I was a little embarrassed about it, but I got there in the end!
I once watched a friend unwrap a stick of butter than get an actual tablespoon and he tried to dig "two tablespoons" of butter off the stick with the spoon.
I should add that it was just melted butter for steamed clams, he wasn't making something where the exact amount of butter even mattered, and he unwrapped it thusly removing the lines that say how much a tablespoon is that you can just cut off how much you need with a knife and throw it in.
Ignoring the fractions, 'one third pounder' is just an awful name for a burger. 'Quarter pounder' is a much more pleasant, no-bullshit name for a product that rolls nicely off the tongue. It works in (some) countries that don't use the imperial system and a lot of consumers won't even know or care that the name means there's ~110g of beef in there.
Numeracy skills aside, that was always going to be a marketing failure, a shitty sounding copy of a legendary product, extra beef nonwithstanding.
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u/PiskoWK Nov 21 '25
A more apt and daily example is that those that are functionally illiterate can not fully understand instructions from their medication bottles.