BookStudyDigest

Saturday, 28 September 2024

Who knew this about forks?

I found this really interesting, mainly because people eat with their hands way more often in Africa than they do in Europe. I noticed this as soon as I moved to Sweden because people would eat a hamburger or toasted sandwich with a knife and fork rather…
Read on blog or Reader
Site logo image https://thisbugslife.com Read on blog or Reader

Who knew this about forks?

By Janet Carr on September 29, 2024

I found this really interesting, mainly because people eat with their hands way more often in Africa than they do in Europe. I noticed this as soon as I moved to Sweden because people would eat a hamburger or toasted sandwich with a knife and fork rather than picking it up with their hands. I grew up eating barbecued meat with my hands, but that is SO not done here. It is also very common where I come from for people to pick rice up with their hands, or use flatbread (like Ethiopian injera to pick food up.

Free image by hermaion

While forks are now a mundane and commonplace item at most dining room tables, they were once quite controversial.

In the Middle Ages, many Christian Europeans considered the act of eating with a fork to be a sinful affront to God. According to some clergymen of the time, God had already given human beings 10 natural forks, in the form of the fingers on their own hands, so daring to use an artificial accessory to spear food was an offense to the Lord and his divine gifts. Not only did using a fork insult the fingers that God gifted to humanity, the thinking went, but it also insulted the food God had provided: To use a fork meant you thought the Lord's bounty was unworthy of being touched by your hands. Forks were so frowned upon in medieval European society that when a Byzantine princess living in Venice died of the plague, her death was said to be God's punishment for her ostentatious and hubristic custom of eating her food with a fork.

The supposedly sinful nature of forks is likely one reason it took so long for the utensils to become widely accepted by European society. While forks had existed since the days of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece, they were predominantly used for cooking, and rarely, if ever, appeared for personal use at the dinner table. Using forks for eating wasn't a regular practice in Europe until the 17th century, and even then their popularity was limited largely to the aristocracy. It wasn't until the late 19th century that forks became widely accepted at all levels of European society as the everyday eating utensils we know today. [source]

Comment

https://thisbugslife.com © 2024.
Manage your email settings or unsubscribe.

WordPress.com and Jetpack Logos

Get the Jetpack app

Subscribe, bookmark, and get real‑time notifications - all from one app!

Download Jetpack on Google Play Download Jetpack from the App Store
WordPress.com Logo and Wordmark title=

Automattic, Inc.
60 29th St. #343, San Francisco, CA 94110

at September 28, 2024
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest

No comments:

Post a Comment

Newer Post Older Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

The Consecrated Eminence: 80 Years Later: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6 & 9, 1945

...

  • [New post] Mackintosh — Beyond the Swelkie (2021)
    peterson10 posted: "Mackintosh, Jim, and Paul S. Philippou, eds. Beyond the Swelkie: A Collection of Poems and Writings Cel...
  • The Consecrated Eminence: 80 Years Later: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6 & 9, 1945
    ...
  • PLDT Home honors mothers on their special day with a heartwarming video titled Backstage Moms
    Motherhood is definitely one of the hardest endeavors a woman can take in her li...

Search This Blog

  • Home

About Me

BookStudyDigest
View my complete profile

Report Abuse

Blog Archive

  • August 2025 (1)
  • April 2025 (1)
  • September 2024 (859)
  • August 2024 (946)
  • July 2024 (879)
  • June 2024 (843)
  • May 2024 (875)
  • April 2024 (1018)
  • March 2024 (1239)
  • February 2024 (1135)
  • January 2024 (934)
  • December 2023 (923)
  • November 2023 (818)
  • October 2023 (743)
  • September 2023 (712)
  • August 2023 (722)
  • July 2023 (629)
  • June 2023 (566)
  • May 2023 (584)
  • April 2023 (629)
  • March 2023 (551)
  • February 2023 (399)
  • January 2023 (514)
  • December 2022 (511)
  • November 2022 (455)
  • October 2022 (530)
  • September 2022 (418)
  • August 2022 (412)
  • July 2022 (452)
  • June 2022 (467)
  • May 2022 (462)
  • April 2022 (516)
  • March 2022 (459)
  • February 2022 (341)
  • January 2022 (385)
  • December 2021 (596)
  • November 2021 (1210)
Powered by Blogger.