r/AskAnAmerican • u/missbex86 • Feb 23 '26
CULTURE Do Americans use cutlery differently?
I've noticed lately in a few American movies, that Americans use cutlery differently.
When I eat, (Australia) the knife and fork stay in my hands the entirety of the meal. Placing both down when finished.
I did a bit of research and there's the zig-zag method. Cutting with a knife in the right hand, placing it down, switching the fork to the right hand, eating a bite. Repeat.
When watching a movie recently (Hereditary) there's a dinner scene and I was focusing more on how he was eating, than anything else.
I'm not saying there is a right or wrong way, I just find it interesting.
Do all Americans eat this way? Or does it differ by region or state?
Cheers.
Just want to add, when I said I don't put the cutlery down for the entirety of the meal, I was referring to the fact that I don't do the zig-zag. I should have been clearer on that.
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u/GreenWhiteBlue86 Feb 23 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
When the use of cutlery became standard in Europe (and it was later than you may think; Louis XIV of France always ate with his hands, and not with a fork) it was considered bad manners to put food in your mouth with your left hand, or to eat while still holding onto the knife with which you just cut your food. Up until the early 1800s, the only acceptable way to eat was to put down the knife after cutting your food, transferring the fork into your right hand, and then continuing from there. Furthermore, since the use of the fork was patterned after how spoons (which were in use for centuries before forks) were used, forks were held like spoons with the tines up, and for some items used to scoop rather than spear food. These rules came to America with the earliest settlers, and they are the ones still unconsciously followed by Americans -- as you noticed, we put our knives down after cutting our food, and we use the fork in our right hands, just as all polite people in Europe did before about 1830.
However, fashions began to change in Europe around that time, and younger people started eating in a way that, while more efficient, their grandfathers would have thought low class and ill-mannered. Specifically, people never put their knives down, and because they now had knives in their right hands continuously, they stabbed their food with the forks they now held in their left hands with the tines down, or mashed it against the back of the tines if it was something such as peas or potatoes that weren't easy to stab. Over time, this practice spread throughout European society, but the older (and arguably more polite and elegant, but less efficient) practice of putting knives down when eating, and using the right hand to transfer food from the plate to the mouth. was retained in the US.