

Mind Your Manners: Eat With Your Hands - chetan51
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/dining/mind-your-manners-eat-with-your-hands.html?_r=1

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yumraj
I'm Indian, been in the Bay Area for about 12-13 years. In an Indian
restaurant I eat with hands, except for rice for which I use forks.

Anyway, my most interesting story is when I went to an Ethiopian restaurant in
Saratoga (not 100% sure but I think it was <http://www.zenirestaurant.com/>)
with a friend and we ordered a bunch of stuff. It was presented in a large
plate, with injera bread at the botton and everything on top, and no cutlery.
When we asked, we were told to eat with hands, which we were only more than
happy to do. [reminds me that I haven't been there in a while, should go again
sometime. :)]

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alphakappa
Interestingly enough, Indian restaurants in India will give you cutlery, but
that implies a spoon and a fork. Knives are somehow absent.

~~~
wluu
In Thai restaurants, all you ever get are spoons and forks :)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_cuisine#Serving>

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Adaptive
This is relevant beyond food.

Most "western" meals involve food preparation that anticipates forks and
knives being present. This doesn't happen in, for example, Chinese cooking
where food is cut into small pieces prior to cooking.

Or in the NE of Thailand where traditional foods are eaten with sticky rice
balled up as a makeshift utensil.

The food preparation anticipate the end user's utensils.

Much like application development.

The iPhone anticipates... fingers.

Android anticipates fingers but also expects the user the know/learn about the
home/menu/back buttons. I'd say this is more akin to expecting the user to
have chopsticks.

Both are simpler that traditional knife/spoon/fork meals (mouse and keyboard),
but there _is_ a difference.

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VMG
Table manners and rules regarding the use of knives were introduced to prevent
violence. In western civilization, it went from having your personal pointy
knife at dinner to using the hosts knife that has a rounded tip and is
typically bland.

In China (and maybe other parts of Asia) knives during dinner became
completely taboo.

(Source: Steven Pinkers "Better Angels of our Nature", very interesting book,
also here: <http://itotd.com/articles/555/tableware-taboos/>)

I'd say from the standpoint of practicality and hygiene, knives and forks win
hands down.

Eating with your hands is appropriate if you don't trust your fellow diners
eating with potential weapons.

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ehsanu1
Don't know about hygiene, but eating with your hands is definitely more
convenient for food designed with utensil-less eating in mind. I doubt the
reason knives and other utensils aren't used many places (such as South East
Asia) has anything to do with some taboo regarding violence during dinner.

And I hope your last sentence there was just tongue in cheek. :)

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nhangen
I have seen far too many people leave the restroom without washing their
hands, and when not sharing food, I prefer utensils because it's easier to
stay clean.

~~~
rytis
This is the thing. Even if you do wash your hands, you still need to get grip
of the restroom door handle or two. And who knows, who's touched it before
you...

~~~
nhangen
Which is why utensils are a must in my book.

~~~
DanBC
Do you (all three people above this comment) know why the right hand is used,
and what the left hand is used for?

> _[...] eating the traditional way, with her right hand_

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nhangen
Yes

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alphakappa
I eat with a knife and fork because that raises less eyebrows when I'm in the
US. When I'm in India, I use hands because anything else would raise eyebrows.

That said, it's very liberating to eat with your hands. If you are concerned
with hygiene (as you should be), wash your hands well before and after you
eat. Remember, you know where your hands have been. You have no idea in whose
mouths those forks have been, and how well they've been washed and handled
afterwards.

There's nothing inherently unhygienic about using hands. Those who don't wash
their hands well don't care about hygiene, so there's no particular reason for
them to be using cutlery. Those who do, are better off using hands as long as
there's a good way to wash them available. Just rinsing with water is not good
enough.

~~~
lusr
While I have nothing against eating with hands (people who eat pizzas with
knives and forks are insane IMO), stating that "You have no idea in whose
mouths those forks have been, and how well they've been washed and handled
afterwards" is absurd: by the same argument, you have no idea where the chef's
hands have been, where the dishes the food is sitting have been, etc. There's
no good reason to believe that eating with your hands is more hygienic
(particularly for people with long fingernails or wounds).

~~~
alphakappa
I'm not claiming that eating with hands is more hygienic. I'm stating that
it's not necessarily less hygienic than using cutlery.

Our assumptions about stuff is based on what we see, and we assume that that
the stuff we don't see probably doesn't exist. We simply assume that the
cutlery is clean, but that's not necessarily true.

Note that I'm not claiming that cutlery is unclean either - just that hygiene
is not a good reason not to use hands. That's an easily solved problem (wash
hands well). There can be better arguments for/against using hands.

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tokenadult
Ethiopian cuisine, which is wonderful, is the cuisine through which I learned
to eat with my hands (picking up the food with pieces of Ethiopian flatbread,
_injera,_ which is made from the flour of the _teff_ grain). I have eaten in
Indian restaurants in my town, and have eaten home-cooked meals here in my
state in the homes of Indian friends, but always we were provided with
utensils to eat Western style. I'd love to try eating south Asian food with my
hands, just as I routinely eat east Asian food with chopsticks. Maybe this is
something that should be mentioned in online ratings of Indian restaurants--
how friendly they are to hands-on eating.

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arturnt
I believe in eating food based on how it was designed to be eaten. For most
asian food chopsticks or hands are appropriate, the food is designed for it.
For Indian food, using your hands is essential. Europeans make you work harder
so you need to use fork and knife.

If you use hands that doesn't mean it isn't sanitary. Keep your hands clean;
there is a shared plate and an individual where you actually eat from.

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renegadedev
Why just confine this to eating? Even while consuming liquids: coffee (south
India) and chai (all over India), you're supposed to hold the cup in your bare
hands. My parents and grandparents would tell me "If it's too (temperature)
hot for your fingers, it's too hot for your stomach". My parents were almost
manic obsessive in making sure my hands and finger nails were clean before I
touched any food and I can't remember a single instance of e-coli poisoning in
my family.

In later life, in college, when I was slumming with students from the
Himalayan regions of India, they carried the same belief with hot soups:
cupping a hot soup in your palm before sipping on it, if it's too hot for your
palm, it's too hot for your digestive tract.

By contrast, Starbucks puts a sleeve on its cups, because of which I can never
tell how hot the coffee is when I'm sipping it.

Not sure, what the scientific basis is behind it, but now that I think about
it in later life, it makes sense that I should be able to gauge the
temperature of a drink before consuming it.

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jdwhit2
_get their hands dirty, in the belief that it heightens the sensual connection
to food and softens the formality of fine dining._

I hadn't eaten curry dishes with my hands or known that it was a common
practice until my mid twenties. Since that point I have rarely used utensils
for those dishes. Here is why:

Some cultures serve three or four different curries with each meal. Eating
with your hand gives greater control mixing the flavours together and so
improves the experience. I can eat the same four curries as my neighbour but
we will both experience different tastes, because our mixing technique is
unique.

I have tried eating from the hand of a friend and compared it to my own and
the taste difference was stunning. It was like we were eating a different
version of the same meal.

Try it out next time you are presented with three or more curries, the only
rule is to not dirty your hand above the first knuckle and certainly keep your
palm clean. Enjoy.

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rjurney
I eat Indian food with my hands - but usually with the help of flatbread. One
gets strange looks.

~~~
akavi
You get looks when eating with flatbread? Really?

Hmm, I'm going to be much more self-conscious from here on out.

~~~
wr1472
Here in the UK. You get looks if you go to an Indian restaurant and eat
flatbread (Naan) with a knife and fork.

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skizm
I eat with utensils because I would like to be able to access my phone (or
other things at the table that require clean hands) without having to go to
the bathroom to wash my hands every time.

~~~
wr1472
Is the phone call usually that important that you can't wait. Oh and when
eating with your hands it's usually with you right hand. Your not meant to use
your left as that's for other things (when you go to the restroom).

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yogrish
Am Indian and I mostly eat with Hands except in restaurants and Office for
hygienic and social reasons. I feel eating with hands establishes a "connect"
between you and food. I relish food alot by this method even if its a simple
meal. With other method I taste spoon(metallic) along with food and hence
can't relish much. Hand also acts as feedback mechanism to brain whether food
is hot/cold, hard/soft etc before tongue (a sensitive part)gets a surprise.

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mycodebreaks
eating with hands is not bad, people of every race in my office eat pizza with
their hands.

Depends on the food that you are eating.

~~~
wahnfrieden
Living in (filthy) NYC, I've learned to eat pizza holding the crust and then
leaving it when I'm done.

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thisrod
Surely these chefs have heard of Noma. Key points being that it's arguably the
best restaurant on Earth, unarguably the trendiest, and that it doesn't
provide utensils.

I wonder to what extent they're copying it? Their arguments for eating with
one's hands are remarkably similar to those of René Redzepi, Noma's chef.

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badclient
I'm Indian. When at home, I eat with hands. When dining at an Indian
restaurant _alone_ , I eat with hands.

I find eating with folk & knife very annoying and unfulfilling to say the
least.

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sodiumphosphate
I prefer the Vulcan way. I eat everything with utensils. I will spare no
finger food the stainless steel.

