Flatware wars: Using the knife and fork

In Europe it's considered good table manners to keep your fork in your left hand and your knife in your right. You cut your food with the knife, then pick it up with the fork and eat it. However, the exact opposite is true in the United States: here, eating this way is considered rude. Instead, well-mannered Americans use the "cut and switch." Fork in the left hand, knife in the right: you cut your food, then set down the knife, switch your fork to your right hand, and spear your food to eat it.

This bit of table manners is as antiquated as it is useless and time-consuming. Personally I eat the European way. Not because I'm so la di da European, you understand, but because I am an impatient eater. Switch the fork and knife each time you take a bite? Ain't nobody got time for that.

It's hard to say why exactly this manner of eating persists in America, when the rest of the world uses flatware in a sensible manner. Although there are plenty of theories. Apparently this flatware etiquette may have come to us from the stuffy French nobility of the 1800s, just another item of cargo cult elitism that marks us as rubes on the global stage.

Even Anna Post, Emily Post's great-granddaughter, eats in the Continental fashion. Let's face it: it's silly not to! I agree with those who are calling for the end to this pretentious bit of dinnertime manners.

It seems that more people are with me on this, particularly younger diners and those living on the coasts. Older people and Midwesterners are apparently most likely to cling stubbornly to the old cut-and-switch. But the times, they are a-changin, and the times say, let's stop this silly nonsense!

Image courtesy Flickr/Jonathan_W