I actually started to read the linked article. I stopped after the first sentence:
"Sea salt and table salt have the same basic nutritional value — both mostly consist of two minerals — sodium and chloride. "

Way to lose all credibility in just a few words...

Another possibility would be the so called referendum from Switzerland:
If the legislature comes up with any law you don't like, you can try to collect 50'000 signatures of fellow citizens in 100 days. If you succeed, that law will be voted about by the public. (Simple majority). Quite a few flawed laws were shot down that way...

Similar thing is the Initiative, if you come up with a new law/idea and get 100'000 people to sign, this gets voted about by everybody as well.

Works quite well to
1. keep politicians in check
2. Get things done politicians wont touch...

(For reference, the population of Switzerland is ~7'000'000)

In contrary, my last cookbook about a rather new cooking method written by an American chef, exclusively uses SI weight measurements, even for liquids like water. Also in developing/changing recipes it is much easier to just tare the balance and keep adding... (Disclaimer: I am a Swiss living in the US and the measurement system is a pet peeve of mine ;-) )

In theory yes, and I would love the setup you described. But last year I had to agree on purchasing a DOS (!) based software because it was the only available device to get the job done. (Believe me, it _was_ the only device, I long enough tried to prove the opposite...)

So at the end of the day it's often: "here's our data, make sure that it's availbale for the next few years for reintegrating, recalculation, etc "

So the whole problem boils down to vendors not being able to standardize their data formats. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?