One of those habits isn’t like the others. But how did you handle the utensils?
Lefty here. As a young boy, probably the first time I was entrusted with cutting my own meat, my mother noticed that I was having a problem cutting with my right hand. She taught me the method of cutting with my dominant hand, then feeding myself with the fork hand.
My dad once remarked that it was a “continental” style of handling the flatware, and said that if I were a spy in Europe, I would fit right in with the locals.
Many years later, I watched a B&W movie about the OSS on the Late Show, and saw the American agent get busted in the German restaurant because people noticed his foreign eating style. 
I don’t switch. Lived in Europe as a child–in fact most of my family lived in Europe for various periods as everybody was in the military when I was growing up. Pretty much all of us, or most of us, quickly adapted to the European method. I think in the case of my family it was because you can actually shovel it in faster that way.
So I still eat that way. I have no idea how many other Americans do this because I don’t pay attention to how anyone else eats unless they are eating in a way I find offensive.
Left-handed American here.
Fork in left hand, tines down unless picking up small things like peas or rice, knife in right. Never switch. I put the knife down when not in use, and I have a tendency to cut several bites at once if I’m eating something that required a bit of effort to cut, like steak. Reading through the thread, I’m a bit confused as to whether this makes me an uncultured oaf or not, but I’ll just assume the worst and cry myself to sleep tonight.
Exactly, you can move the food onto the fork and then shovel it into ones mouth to eat.
Most people eat a peach with skin while using their hands - even in Germany - that peach guy is just weird… whatever makes him happy, I guess.
It just looks simple to me - since only simple people & children do it here.
I’ve seen my buddy fighting with his food several times over the years - it just looks an awkward and an inefficient way of eating to me - however he still manages to eat his food, even if half of it is cold by the time he gets to it.
Some history in article - Fork and knife use: Americans need to stop cutting and switching.
Cut and switch was french at one time, and spread, picked up in America. When Europe went the other way we didn’t. Seems to me that European style in gaining ground in my part of America.
I do a mix of both these days.
Yep, another lefty here. Never even noticed people switching hands before.
I’m right handed and eat the American way. Cut with the dominant hand, otherwise eat with the dominant hand. I’m amazed than anyone cares. The food is on the plate and has to get in your mouth. Obsessing over what hand does what seems very odd.
I have heard that Nazi POW guards would observe the prisoners eating to identify Americans pretending to be British. I don’t find it terribly credible, it seems doubtful that the POWs ever had anything to cut or that Americans found any advantage in posing as Brits, but if anyone has any info please share.
This is me. When I was taught the “fork in left to cut, fork in right to eat” method as a child I decided almost immediately that it made no sense and kept my fork in my right hand. But so far as I can tell, the switching method is still dominant here.
Just goes to show how arbitrary ‘good manners’ are from different cultures. The American cut and switch is deemed ill-mannered in the UK, because having the tines up encourages food shovelling. Tines down, and you are forced to eat more daintily (and need the knife to push food onto the turned down fork.
I therefore found it startling when I was young to see Julie Andrews use the ‘cut and switch’ method in the Sound of Music. As a fairly posh British actress, there is just no way she would eat like that in real life, so the US directors must have told her to do so. I imagine she would have found it quite uncouth.
(And for all those of you, left handed or not, who keep your knife in left/fork in right, well, words fail me. My mother would have slapped the back of my hand :eek:).
I see no reason, why the tines can’t be turned up or down - regardless on in what hand the fork is placed in or what method you are using.
In fact, to get the food from the plate to the mouth, people usually turn the fork and move/push the food with the knife onto the fork.
The fork is turned to spike the food to hold in place for cutting - conveniently you can than move that food straight to your mouth for consumption and or turn the fork to add other food.
I’m a left handed American. As long as I remember, I’ve eaten with the fork in my left hand and knife in my right hand and I never switch. It’s more efficient this way. I also cut with my right hand because the left handed scissors were shit quality in school.
I grew up cut n switch, but now I alternate fairly freely based on the stabability of the food. For meat, broccoli, roasted potatoes the fork is in my left hand. Mashed potatoes or peas the fork goes to the right hand to scoop.
Trying to eat mashed potatoes with the fork in my left hand would feel extremely clumsy. I’m not even sure how eating peas would be possible. Do people ever turn around the fork and scoop with the left hand? Scooping with my left hand feels extremely awkward, like trying to sign my name with my left hand.
Did that German guy happen to eat his Snickers bar with a fork and knife as well?
It also looks greedy & gluttonous. Won’t even put down the utensils between bites; have to keep a grip on that fork and knife; keep those fists clenched.
When I was a child, we were explicitly taught not to eat the “european way.” When we were small, they’d take them out of our hands and put them back in the right way. We’d be more strictly admonished when we were old enough to know better. If I notice someone doing it, even though I’d never say anything and intellectually I know that there are many different styles of eating and manners, a part of me thinks “raised by wolves.”
I am a right-handed American and have eaten with the fork always in my left and and the knife always in the right hand all my life.
I must not pay any attention all to the habits of others because I cannot ever member seeing anyone switch hands after cutting.
I have always referred to “cut 'n switch” as “American style” as, for whatever reason, in the USA, it is quite common, and is almost never pointed out in public (which I have seen done in Australia). I try not to do it, but sometimes it just gets to the point where I just can’t get enough food with my left hand and end up switching; usually, something like mashed potatoes or rice is involved.
IIRC, director Terry Gilliam was admonished in the dining room of the hotel that became the basis for Fawlty Towers when somebody (either the head chef or the hotel owner) complained that he was eating “too American” when he did this. (This is the dining room where Graham Chapman asked for a “three-egg omelet” and got an omelet with three eggs fried on top of it.)
I do both, sometimes in the same meal. It seems such an easy way to piss off the vast majority of the world.
Me too… I like to think I got this from my father, who emigrated to the US from Britain after WWII.
I have never seen an American using the fork with the tines protruding from the pinky side of the fist. You hold it like you would a pencil.
We cut the meat exactly the same… but then we politely set the knife down and then use the fork in our right hand with the tines up to pick up and take the bite to our mouths.
I can eat “Continental” style but would never do so in any kind of a formal or business situation. Doing so would make me feel like I looked like I was starving and couldn’t wait for the next bite.
I go to business dinners with clients from around the globe and I have no problem with the way they use their utensils, but the “switch” has been drilled into me as the proper American dining etiquette.