Every culture follows different dining etiquette, but a lot of non-Americans find issues with the American way of using cutlery, it seems.
Several TikTok users have taken to the platform to express their opinions about how Americans hold the fork and knife while eating as people from other countries argue they do it differently.
Europeans react to how Americans hold the cutlery
Several videos on TikTok imitate Americans at a dining table to show how they use the cutlery – fork on the left hand and knife on the right.
Of course, that’s how people in most countries hold the cutlery while eating, except they don’t switch hands, which Americans do apparently.
Content creators are bamboozled upon seeing Americans use the fork and knife to cut their food and then shift the fork to the other hand to scoop the food while placing the knife away.
Content creators from Europe and Australia find the hand-switching “strange” as they claim to hold the fork and knife in the same hands from start to finish.
Some of them also find it odd that Americans use the back of the fork to scoop the food, which isn’t as “functional” as the hollow side.
Users are divided
Unlike most Americans admitting to boiling water in a rather specific way, many argue they don’t switch hands to hold the fork while eating as the non-Americans claim.
When one user wrote: “American. Left-handed. The fork stays on my left and I cut my food as I eat it. Like a normal person.”
“It’s an etiquette thing specific to the US! Most people who attended cotillion or etiquette classes were taught to put the knife down for each bite!,” said another.
When a third person commented: “I’m American and I do both depending on what I’m eating.” another added: “I’m an American but I eat the UK way”
Despite the divided opinions the “cut-and-switch” technique has been adopted in different cultures while it appears to be forgotten among Americans. As most users pointed out, regardless of what the age-old dining tradition says, they use the cutlery for their convenience.
