Mind Your Manners: Eat With Your Hands | Hacker News Reader

Mind Your Manners: Eat With Your Hands

nytimes.com

51 pointschetan5138 comments

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. :)]

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

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

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

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.

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.

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. :)

The Thais are one of the most hygiene conscious populations I've encountered, particularly in the NE where eating with hands only is most common.

I could counter by saying that eating with utensils is appropriate if you are barely civilized and can't be trusted to wash your hands before eating.

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.

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...

Which is why utensils are a must in my book.

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

Yes

Or if you're not western - washing your hands every time you use the restroom.

It's all about perspective.

Not really. I can enforce my own standards, but it doesn't mean everyone will enforce them on their own. This is relevant when sharing food, for instance.

Oh and one other major point. when eating with hands you should ALWAYS wash your hands either just before you sit at the table or at the table.

That isn't really a hard problem to solve - I simply take a small paper towel and grab the door handle with it. There's usually a bin near the door to throw the paper towel away.

I also remember hearing about some research in a TEDx talk where the presenter said that contrary to expectation, the inside handle of bathroom doors is generally cleaner than your kitchen sink.

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.

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).

>people who eat pizzas with knives and forks are insane IMO

You mean all Italians are insane?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

You get looks when eating with flatbread? Really?

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

Nah, don't.

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

Certain Indian food is eaten with rice and some with bread. If you are using the wrong one that is the only reason you would get strange looks. If you use fork and knife then you would actually get strange looks.

I found that was true in India. Here, some people are weird.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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