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Comment by ynniv | Hacker News Reader

These are basically training chopsticks. If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks. Chopsticks are cheap, easy to clean, versatile, able to be made from materials like bamboo, and more elegant than pincers. You can't make rudimentary scissors out of pincers, and those points look too narrow to hold anything heavy. The only problem with chopsticks is that they're harder to use, but if you use them regularly you'll be able to pick up heavy items using polished metal chopsticks in no time.

https://marcosticks.org/best-learning-chopsticks/

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> The only problem with chopsticks is that they're harder to use

I'd almost say that's debatable.

My wife had eaten almost exclusively with chopsticks when we got together, and myself almost exclusively with a fork. At this point I'm much more competent with chopsticks than she is with a fork.

I've watched our infant daughter learn how to use a fork.

It's all made it pretty clear that using a fork does require skill, technique, and fine motor skills if you expect to use it as much more than a shovel. Even as a shovel, trying to get the food _on_ to the fork without pushing it over the edge of the plate requires some finesse. Even just trying to stab food, many foods require different techniques to not have them roll away, break apart when stabbed, etc.

I pretty firmly believe that treating a fork as intuitive mostly just comes from everyone here being familiar with it.

> My wife had eaten almost exclusively with chopsticks when we got together, and myself almost exclusively with a fork. At this point I'm much more competent with chopsticks than she is with a fork.

I can attest to this. Sometimes my wife struggles to get food out of the hot pot so I get it out using chop sticks for her.

Years ago, I learned to hold chopsticks correctly the hard way: by looking at instructions (found on a packet of disposable chopsticks) and holding them as instructed to pick up food while eating.

It was awkward, and my hand ached for a week or so before I adjusted. Now, I can even pick up peanuts and grains of rice with chopsticks without thinking about it.

I'm left-handed, and now I'm training my right hand to hold chopsticks too. :-)

> These are basically training chopsticks. If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks. Chopsticks are cheap, easy to clean, versatile, able to be made from materials like bamboo, and more elegant than pincers.

Using chopsticks is also good exercise for your fingers. I suspect that's the main reason why they're so satisfying to use.

I suspect a lot of the satisfaction for western users is they only use them when they eat sushi. Which of course is simply delicious.

isn't sushi intended to be eaten by hand?

I believe that conventionally nigiri and hand rolls are meant to be eaten by hand, and (cut) maki rolls with chopsticks.

I mean back in the day maybe yes, but nowadays even in Japan no-one eats sushi by hand.

"No one" is a bit hyperbolic. It's not super common, but some people do. I think the most common place where it happens is high-end sushi restaurants.

Yeah it’s a hyperbole for sure. But on a general day-to-day life you just don’t see it.

I've used chopsticks on a variety of stuff. I guess the answer to that question depends on whether you own your own pair of chopsticks or if you just get them as part of your meal.

Yeah, chopsticks are like using your fingers without getting them dirty. I've started using surplus takeout chopsticks for cooking. (I have nice chopsticks, but they give me them anyway). I have a jar of chopsticks[] on the counter and wash / reuse. They whisk eggs, pick up bacon, stir pasta, snag a bit of shell from the egg you just cracked into the pan, etc.

[]: chopsticks, fish turner, measuring spoons

I love using chopsticks to eat chips and other snacks. Keeps my fingers clean & easier to pace myself!

Indeed, the only way to eat cheese puffs is with chopsticks.

You can buy slightly longer and bigger chopsticks specifically made for cooking. They are a joy. They can do everything you would use tongs for but are easier to use.

Using chopsticks to pick up finger food that's a little greasy, like potato chips, while keeping your hands clean for typing feels great.

I had a roommate that found it hilarious when I did so but I swore by it and still do.

There are special "cooking" chopsticks you can buy that are thicker and longer than normal chopsticks which helps keep your hands away from the heat. Great for flipping things while deep frying in hot oil and more.

I’ve worked with a number of colleagues who did this. I bought them all these chopsticks I found on AliExpress that we’ve since dubbed ChipSticks. They’re pretty similar to training chopsticks, except they slide over the top of your fingers. The result is chopsticks that are almost like extensions of your fingers rather than something you hold.

That’s what I thought reading the article but to be fair with the author it took me months to become really good with chopsticks while I was eating all my meals using them living in Singapore. Most people will only use chopsticks while eating out so they frankly suck at it. I get why tweezers would be appealing to them.

There's a big difference between these and training chopsticks, which is that training chopsticks have an undeserved childish association with them. No need to try to add that association to this entirely different utensil.

> If you find yourself using them a lot, you'll find it easier and more satisfying to use actual chopsticks

Personally, I can use chopsticks just fine, but there's no way it's "easier" to use chopsticks than pincers. It might be more satisfying to master chopsticks, but I don't think most people are interested in mastering their salad fork and feeling satisfaction, we hopefully make decisions based on effectiveness. The author was saying, "hey, let's drop the historical baggage and just use the more effective tool when we see it."

> no way it's "easier" to use chopsticks than pincers

Once you are practiced, yes it is easier. Chopsticks are a more effective and more versatile tool, assuming you can use them fluently.

But you are right that it takes significant practice to achieve fluency. Similar to riding a bike, hand writing, knitting, swimming, playing a musical instrument, controlling a puppet, or any other complex new physical skill.

> don't think most people are interested in mastering their salad fork and feeling satisfaction

A salad fork is an effective but low-skill tool which does not require much practice. An adult can “master” the salad fork in a matter of minutes.

Forks are not that easy to use actually. It’s probably fine with salads which is a fairly large and easy to stick piece of food but if you have ever seen someone with tremors try to use one it quickly gets obvious that forks require a lot of fine motor skills to be used properly.

I believe the comparison was relative to the scale of eating utensils; forks being far lower on the skill curve relative to chop sticks .

If you have tremors, a fork will be easier than chop sticks for instance. A spoon perhaps easier still.

>> Once you are practiced, yes it is easier. Chopsticks are a more effective and more versatile tool, assuming you can use them fluently.

“Versatile” =/= “easier”.

My mother-in-law with arthritis and no familiarity with chopsticks would disagree with you that it’s easier for her, today, to pick up a sweet pea with chopsticks vs those pincers.

I would assume that if you presented people unfamiliar with eating using both implements a meal, the pincers would be selected more often. That’s what most people mean by “easy”- simpler and more intuitive.

What is easier? 100km on foot or 100km on a bicycle? Almost all people already know how to walk and run, it's simpler and more intuitive. But I bet if you know how to ride a bike, you'll pick the bike.

> My mother-in-law with arthritis and no familiarity with chopsticks ...

Can you see how this does not disagree with “assuming you can use them fluently”?

Anything you can already easily do is easy. You are correct.

It’s a pointless statement, which is my point, but it is correct.

For someone who is fluent, an “easier” learner’s tool is often more cumbersome and less pleasant to use than the original tool.

For example, instead of learning to use general-purpose kitchen knives you could buy a bunch of specialized kitchen gadgets: scallion-cutting scissors, a garlic peeler, a garlic dicer, an asparagus peeler, a strawberry stem remover, a bell pepper seed remover, a tomato slicer, a bread guillotine, an egg slicer, a banana slicer, etc. (these are real devices, not jokes).

For a total novice or someone with a severe disability, these might be “easier” than just using a knife or two for the same job. But for someone who is fluent with 2–3 basic knives, these jobs are all faster, easier, and more effective to do with a knife than with the purpose-built tool; each gadget also has very limited utility and wastes space when not in use.

Can you see how the unqualified statement “a banana slicer is easier to use than a chef’s knife” could also be considered misleading?

Not to give the fork too much credit, but a lot of people don't even hold them correctly. I've watched peoples food dance across plates because of this. Also +1 to the other folks mentioning people with disabilities/arthritis. My dad was in a rehab home for a bit and there were a lot of people who had to have their food served precut.

But they are metal, making them easier to clean, and connected, meaning one part of the two can't get lost.

From a functional perspective that may be a meaningful improvement; if you are running a restaurant with a focus on costs & cleanliness, this sounds better.

Chopsticks are regularly made out of metal. Wood is a design choice, not a necessity.

And most disposable are made from bamboo which is substainable.

In Japan chopsticks are not made of metal. They are in Korea, though (AIUI).

despite Chinese-American fast food restaurants typically using cheap disposable bamboo chopsticks, metal chopsticks also exist and are used in many restaurants. higher-end restaurants typically use high-quality (heavy) polymer or coated wooden chopsticks which can be thoroughly cleaned in regular dishwashers.

edit to add: I enjoy Chinese-American fast food, but like all fast food, it is designed to be cheap, not luxury. it would be like going to an American-style fast food restaurant and complaining that all American food is bad because it gets your hands dirty when eating, or complaining that the cheap disposable plastic utensils are hard to clean (which gets to another point that disposable wooden chopsticks are probably much better for the environment than disposable plastic forks/knives, but that's a digression from a digression)

The metal chopsticks that I've tried are too slippery. Wood (even smooth wood) has just a bit more grip.

Honestly once I got used to using chopsticks, Asian food somehow just tasted better.

Same with Indian food and using your hands. It just somehow tastes better.

I’ve been living in Asia for 11 years now. I think. Not quite sure.

There’s something about picking up food with chop sticks and not crushing or mixing food together like with a fork, and being able to dip it or turn it. It makes eating food here more enjoyable to the point that I agree.

Somehow it just makes food taste better.

Now that you mention it, yes, pincers do remind me of training chopsticks:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%EB%BD%80%EB%A1%9C%EB%A1%9C+...

... though I guess a restaurant owner might be hesitant to put these on a table :P

Disposable utensils is very 20th Century.

I know there are multiple use chopsticks but I’ve yet to run across such in a bar or other informal cuisine setting.

Metal chopsticks are pretty common in Korea.

Disposable chopsticks are both ridiculously cheap and not much worse than reusable ones (compared to how bad plastic forks are). So the crossover where we switch from disposable to reusable as a bar/restaurant gets nicer is in a different place with chopsticks vs forks.

Disposable chopsticks are a bit of soft wood or bamboo. Your processed and bleached napkin probably has a higher environmental impact. Compare that to a plastic fork, or even a metal fork that accidentally ends up in the trash.

That said, most people have re-usable ones at home. Metal ones can be tricky, but easily last a decade or more. Bamboo ones are also common. Both are dishwasher safe.

> That said, most people have re-usable ones at home.

Source?

I mean, I’ll believe that you have them.

Anyway, the thread was about restaurants, I believe.

Lol, show me your source on how many households have re-usable forks

Any household who's had a picnic or party, I'd guess. Leftover disposable cutlery is unavoidable.

I suspect that you did not read that carefully.

Globally? Vs chopsticks?

That's an interesting question and I couldn't find a direct answer. Let's use a good old Fermi estimate instead.

This report [1] tells us that the "global disposable cutlery market was valued at $10.1 billion in 2021."

I checked the Walmart website and they sell various disposable cutlery packs at about $0.04 -$0.08 per single unit. I know it's not an accurate representation of global prices, but it's a good start. I'm going to use $0.05 per unit in my estimates.

A market size of $10.1 billion divided by $0.05 gives us 202 billion units of disposable cutlery used per year.

The report I linked above mentioned that disposable eating utensils "are generally used once and then discarded".

Let's assume that a person uses two disposable utensils per day. That's 700 utensils per year.

202 billion divided by 700 gives us little less than 290 million people using disposable utensils.

Let's also assume that those 290 million people use exclusively disposable utensils. It's likely not true - say, some people might use disposables eating out but reusables at home. It lowers the average yearly usage of disposable utensils down from 700. This would increase the number of people who use disposable utensils. At the same time, it would also increase the number of people using reusable utensils.

How many people use forks and spoons and knives (of any kind)? I've seen anything between 1-2 billion. Seems plausible.

1.5 billion (total utensils users) - 290 million (disposable only users) is 1.21 billion people using reusable utensils. About 400 million households, at 3 people per household.

A crude estimate, but feels in the right order of magnitude.

1 - https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/disposable-cutlery-mark...

I expect they mean that people who frequently use chopsticks at home are likely to have reusable ones.

That may be an America thing. In Asia, you'll almost always get reusable chopsticks at a restaurant.

Utensils in general are 19th century. Back in the day people just carried a sharp knife with them to stab their food. Spoons didn't exist in Europe until mid-17th century. Forks came into fashion in the 18th century in Europe, only reaching America by the 19th century. The main purpose was for scooping food off a plate, and steadying food for cutting.

Any non-crappy japanese, chinese, korean, etc restaurant will give you reusable chopsticks. Korean stuff is all metal so it's easy to clean. Some people are weird and bring their own portable chopsticks (they screw together and have a pouch).

All accurate, though we might qualify that by 'spoons' we mean personal spoons for eating from a personal bowl, it would be shocking if medieval Europeans didn't use stirring spoons while cooking, or ladles for serving, for example. Just that if you shovel the stew out of the bowl with a piece of bread, you don't need a spoon also.

even cheap hole in a wall restaurants in China use reusable chopsticks from hard wood/plastic, they have even special cleaning machine where you just throw them in top and when cleaned they stick from side

metal chopsticks are pretty much standard in Korea (personally not a fan, prefer hard wood or good quality plastic, metal feels cold and clinks on teeth)

https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chopsticks-in-japan

> In 1878, Japan produced the world's first disposable chopsticks, and today China and Japan use the majority of them. China is responsible for using 45 billion disposable chopsticks a year. Japan is about half of that at 24 billion.

I've used plastic, lacquered wood, and stainless steel multi-use chopsticks. Each of them has problems. At home I use titanium chopsticks and they are phenomenal, but bamboo are just as good if not better.

...which accidentally gives us the information in question. With 1.4 billion people using chopsticks on average twice a day, that'd mean 511 billion instances of chop-stick usage per year.

So the Chinese use disposable chopsticks about 8% of the time, thus debunking the grandparent's claim that they're primarily disposable.

So you figured I was talking about the large number of bars and restaurants I visit in China?

:-D

Sadly I’ve never had an occasion to travel there, and so my assumptions and observations about utensil usage are valid for parts of Western Europe, Africa and South East Asia.

I figured since the thread was about Estonia, it would be safe to assume we were not discussing how the Chinese might benefit from switching away from chopsticks to large pincers.

You didn't qualify your statement with a location (and I have no idea who you are; there are obviously readers here from all over the world), and it seems weird to retroactively assume that we all understood your general statement about chopstick usage to only apply to the regions where they're only used as a novelty, but not to, you know, the region of the world which (a) actually uses chopsticks and (b) contains most of the world's population.

I'm sorry, I will be sure to post be more specific when I post in the future.

That way you won't need to tell me I'm wrong. I can tell you don't enjoy that.

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