As my 11-year-old son and I were returning from picking up Chinese food for dinner, he asked a very interesting question…namely, why did Western culture develop the fork and Eastern culture the chopstick?
Any ideas???
Does there need to be a complex reason behind this?
Both are perfectly adequate ways of eating most foods, and once you have one suitable utensil that seems to do the job it will catch on and be validated by history and tradition.
Chopsticks are arguably easier to manufacture and clean. I suppose a lot also depends on the kinds of food you plan on eating.
Heck, no! It was just one of those kid questions that made me go, “Hmmmm!”
Not really. Chopsticks work for Chinese food because it is served cut up into small chunks. Try eating a steak with chopsticks. Of course, Chinese food is served this way precisely because of the limitations of chopsticks. On the other hand, it’s hard to think of any solid food that can’t be eaten with a knife and fork.
I think this is the real reason for the invention of chopsticks. Western cutlery is more difficult to produce and therefore more expensive. In the middle ages if you were invited to eat at someone else’s house you were expected to bring your own cutlery.
I have no cite, but I’ve heard that Chinese cooking developed in areas where fuel was scarce. That meant meat and vegetables were cut small to minimize cooking time. This type of food is easy to eat with chopsticks. Contrast that to Western food which typically involves big pieces of meat and vegetables cooked slowly. You want a knife for that.
Not my field of expertise…but I’m guessing that forks evolved from (and can still be) two-pronged implements, and chopsticks are, ummm, two-pronged implement. Is there really a great difference?
Cooking fuel wasn’t always plentiful in China, so meats and vegetables were cut into small pieces so they’d cook faster. Rice was cooked so that it was somewhat sticky and would clump up. The food was served in bowls. Chopsticks work marvelously for grabbing chunks of food and clumps of rice, as well as for spooning/fanning it out of bowls.
Europeans tended to cook big pieces of meat, and cut or rip off good-sized hunks. Forks work really well for dealing with this.
That’s how I remember hearing it. Someone more knowledgable will likely correct/elaborate.
To clarify one bit, that should be “…as well as for spooning/fanning it out of bowls directly into mouths.” (The bowl was held up to the lips.)
I’m not sure of the validity of this reason, but I’ve heard that it was considered barbaric to pierce or cut meat while eating. Thus, no forks or knives.
I think I heard this on Yan Can Cook, so take it with a grain of… rice? 
Both sites seem to back the “small pieces/little fuel” thesis.
I just saw a little gizmo on TV the other day. You put the ends of the chopsticks into a plastic holder thingy and it helps you get the knack of the motion used in operating them, but they can’t get away from you. It rocked.
Didn’t Europeans essential ate things like gruels, ragouts and stew?
As **silenus’s ** link indicates, the fork was a quite late introduction into Europe, being mostly an affectation of the upper classes until the Renaissance or later (after 1600 in England). Fingers were good enough for regular folks, supplemented by a knife to cut the meat and a spoon for soup.
You need a knife or cleaver to cut meat, a spoon to eat soup, a glass to drink beer/water/mead/milk. If you have a knife, and can cut meat, chopsticks do the job.
I would have thought primitive societites would use most of their time trying to get any type of food, and eat it raw or roasted over a fire or hot rock. Woks, steamers and clay pots presumably came later. It makes sense that small bits of food cook faster, using less fuel. If the question is making a fire, also a source of warmth by times, was wood in such short supply? If you are talking about cooking oil, is this fuel in tighter supply in a generic Eastern country than in the occident?
It seems to depend on if the meat is cut into bite-sized pieces by the cook or at the table, doesn’t it.
Personally, I prefer a fork for most things besides sushi.
I kinda prefer chopsticks. I can eat just about anything but soup with them, and they’re cheap, disposable and get you funny looks from most people outside of Chinese restaurants.
regards the steak and his chopsticks, discards one chopstick, skewers the steak with the other, and proceeds to bite off pieces of the steak
Mmmmmm 
The fork is a relatively recent development in Western culture. People generally ate with their fingers. The “cutlery” you were expected to bring with you was the knife that you always carried with you, and which you used for everything, not just eating.
Chopsticks act on food the way that fingers act, ie squeezing gently or hard between two rounded surfaces. This allows some things to be easier than with a fork, such as picking floating items out of a soup, or picking up a single pea or bean off a plate. With a fork if you have nothing to push against you end up chasing the pea or wonton arround the plate.
On the other hand a fork is more capable for eating pureid or soft foods like mashed potatoes and is superior in holding a large piece of meat so that the knife can be used to cut it.
So once the chopstics or fork is introduced the sort of food that is easy to eat with chopsticks becomes part of the cuisine and those items where the implement is less useful don’t become part of the cuisine.
So fork users eat sausages and mash, whilest chopstick users eat sushi and won-ton soup.