Rather than have a long hijack of PoorYorick’s post in the Behaviour you copied from movies … thread, I’ll start this up.
Bwuh? What is this “American way” of which he speaks? Why would you switch the hand you’re using to hold the fork?
Knife in right hand, fork in left hand. Stab food with fork, cut food with knife, place forkfull of food in mouth with left hand. Why would someone switch hands just to lift a fork?
FTR, I’m a rightie.
In multiple attempts to teach me manners in my childhood, that was always the “right way.” Cut with the fork in the off hand for knife-leverage, eat with the fork in the right hand for control. The occasional bored glance around restaurants confirms that in MN and OR at least, about 3/4 of the people do it that way. Most of the non-switchers I see tend to be younger; maybe it’s dying out.
I’m a non-switcher, but I’m left handed. I do put the knife down between cutting bites, though, and I hold my fork with the tines up.
I’m a switcher. I’ll cut 3 or 4 small pieces if it’s a steak or chicken or something like that then lay the knife on the edge of the plate and switch fork hands. In home ec we were taught it was not lady-like to cut more than two bites at a time, but sometimes I’m just hungry and want “less cutty, more eaty!”
It’s just habit and I don’t have a reason to try to change it since it isn’t hurting anything.
From my observations, in the southern US at least, it seems to be about 80% switchers. To make it worse, the fork is usually held in the fist, making the eater look like he’s afraid that his meat will run away. You then place the knife down, switch the fork from left to right, and there you go.
This is how I was taught. Even now, twenty-some years later after being a “non-switcher,” people will still ask me sometimes why I hold my knife and fork that way.
ETA: Even though I termed it the “European” style of eating, I guess that’s not quite right. From watching the BBC, it seems like Europeans never move their fork from the left hand, which makes eating peas and corn look very interesting.
Switcher here.
It’s just how I was taught, though I sometimes don’t switch. Usually just for the meat though, or things you can stab and eat. I don’t quite have the dexterity to scoop up, say, peas with my left hand and have them make it into my mouth consistently.
Switcher and “pre-cutter”. I was always taught that the knife should be at rest and left hand on lap when actually taking a bite of food. We associate two-handed eaters with the same folks that tucked a napkin into their neckline and went to town.
Non-switcher. But I hold the fork in my right hand and knife in the left during cutting and eating. I just can’t get it to work the other way around.
Usually I cut one morsel at a time then switch hands. I don’t remember ever being taught or told to do so, it just happened somehow. For me it’s a good thing as it forces me to eat more slowly; I’m apt to eat very quickly if I’m just having a sandwich or something like that.
Slight hijack, I’m wondering if europeans tend to be more ambidextrous because of this?
Switcher here as well (though I’m Canadian). Also, tines must be down. When I see someone with tines up it looks really weird!
I was taught to cut one piece of meat, put down the knife, switch hands, left hand in lap, stap meat, eat, stab potato, eat, stab veg, eat, etc. Then fork back in left hand, cut new piece of meat. Lather, rinse, repeat. Interestingly, the “moving around the plate” thing was really stressed. Apparently, eating all of one thing at once is very poor manners. Apparently.
Meals were kind of tense in my house until mom started making alot of casseroles! 
If at all possible, I use the edge of the fork as a blunt instrument to cleave a piece of meat off. Failing that, I cut most of the meat into pieces first, and then switch because I’m right-handed, and eating with my left just feels weird…
Joe
I was taught to switch, but haven’t for maybe 30 years. I seem to recall it showing up as a plot point in spy novels and movies, where the American spy was taught not to switch while eating so that when he was dropped into occupied Europe he would not give himself away to the Gestapo by using such an obviously American technique.
Leftie and switcher here. I cut with my left hand, holding the fork in my right, then switch the fork to my left hand to eat. I generally don’t even think about it while I’m eating and I don’t remember anyone trying to teach me to do otherwise.
I am a devout non-switcher but my MIL is English so she is there to back me up (as well as my wife). I don’t often say this but the American way is retarded in this case. This is the only issue that me and Ms. Manners ever came to blows over.
FWIW -
I recall a story from WWII where an American soldier is hiding out with a family somewhere in Europe. The Nazis show up and everyone in the house is around the dinner table. The Nazis watch everyone eating and are able to pick out the American soldier because he is “fork switching”.
Hmmm…mentions of pre-cutting got me thinking. My “lunch hour” at work is at 3:00 – however, if I wanted until then to have lunch I’d be a rather unpleasant person, so I usually go make lunch around noon/1-ish. If I’m making something that requires cutting up, I always cut up the entire meal before I leave the kitchen, leaving me free to just eat while I’m working. When I do that, I keep the fork in my right hand instead of my left…interesting.
I’m a switcher, I guess due to my lack of coordination. And as **Spectre ** said, I don’t recall being taught one way or the other. It’s simply the only way food is going to end up where it needs to go.
I never even thought about it until I was dating an Englishman who pointed out the stupid way Yanks eat . He also mocked how some people cut up their whole piece of meat first the way their *mum * did for them when they were a child ( I have never done this). Oh, and one apparently isn’t supposed to make broad cutting motions as if one is sawing a log. The proper way is to hold one’s arm close to one’s side with the cutting action coming from the wrist.
Yeah, he was kind of a pain in the arse.
I switch. I can’t seem to get my left hand to be the least bit coordinated, so I need the knife in my right when I cut, but then I need the fork in the right hand for eating. So, switcheroo. I try eating with the fork in the left hand, sometimes, because I’m self-conscious when I’m around non-switchers, but it never goes well and I usually give up after a few bites.
Canadian, if it matters.
The first time I heard of this whole fork switching thing was here on the Dope. The idea seems bizarre to me. Everyone I know eats with knife and fork in fixed hands (fork left, knife right is usual and I eat that way even though I’m left handed). My location field is accurate if anyone is geographically tabulating the data.