The American way of using fork and knife is inefficient and inelegant.

I hate dining etiquette. It's a fancy way of saying "doing something a specific way because that's the way everyone else does it". Groupthink at it's highest. I eat whatever way is best suited for the meal.

The contrarian in me now says "Cut and then bring the bite to your mouth with your knife, the fork is now a stabilizing tool, also mock every European who doesn't".

If you really want efficiency, eat South-East Asian style: spoon in the right, fork in the left. The fork is used to hold onto larger things and to rake food onto your spoon, but it never goes into your mouth; the spoon shovels food into your mouth, and its edge can be used to cut as well. This way you can plow through rice and curry like you wouldn't believe, and it's a surprisingly good way of eating even things like chicken legs doused in sauce without getting your hands dirty.

In much of Asia, knifes are reserved for the kitchen, where it's the cook's job to chop everything up into bite-size pieces before being served.

God I hate it when people try to push this stupid line...

I used to live with a British flatmate who was otherwise a nice person, but would constantly harp on me when I was eating "You're using your knife and fork incorrectly."

So for a while, I tried it her way, just to see if I could get used to it, and if it was actually better. After a while, I could kinda do it, but frankly, it always felt awkward and clumsy, and there was no obvious advantage.

Both techniques have their merits—lack of switching -versus- use of primary hand for extra knife power/control—but frankly, both work just fine, neither is obviously superior, and the main difference is what you're used to (in most cases, over decades).

If you're eating dinner the the Queen, then yeah, take a cutlery course first, learn how she does it, and try to do that. She probably doesn't care, but hey, you're eating with the Queen, so a little deference to tradition and pomp seems the way to go.

Otherwise, just do what feels natural to you. If someone whines at you, ask them which hand they'd prefer to be stabbed by, and if you're doing it wrong...

Interesting. I used to hold the fork in my right the entire time, cutting with knife in my left hand.

Upon being informed that was a faux pas, I cut with the fork in my left, knife in right.

Finding it difficult to lift the food with my left hand, I intuitively adopted cut and switch and would eat with my right.

Noticing that no one around me (in Quebec) seemed to do this, I eventually adopted the European manner.

Now, following the Paleo diet, I frequently end up simply eating with my hands when at home. Feels great.

www.marksdailyapple.com/eat-with-your-hands/‎

I'm now either incredibly avant garde or a brute.

I'm American and I've never done cut-and-switch. Since I was a kid, I've always knifed with my left and forked with my right. Never understood why people feel the need to cut meat with their right hand. So weird to me.

Better still, relegate the knife to food prep.

Rampant, completely unsubstantiated speculation that is probably contradicted by the evidence: I wonder if we'd be even more fat if we didn't switch. Switching slows down your eating, and I know that there is data to show that slower eating means you eat less. I guess the foods we eat too much of that are really bad for you, like snacks, sandwiches, and sodas, don't take a fork and knife at all.

That said, my wife and I are eating out French tonight, so I'll try to put down my guilt and manners and not switch hands!

I'm left handed, never been an issue. I also never understood why table settings are the only thing where the world seems to appreciate my left-handedness.

I thought this was going to be about using chopsticks.

Because getting food into us faster is a serious efficiency problem plaguing Americans everywhere.

It is more common in Europe to hold the fork in your left hand rather than your right. But I think that has more to do with handedness than anything.

I'm right-handed, yet hold the fork in my right hand and often get comments about being 'cack-handed'.

Still beats chopsticks.

inefficiency can infer