to think mixing up your food on a plate is bad manners?

[Moonatic]

This is dh I'm talking about. Made a pastry-topped chicken and leek pie at the weekend. Served with sweetcorn and carrots. Before eating it, he cut his whole serving into small pieces (size of a penny), then mixed it up. I got really annoyed, as dis the kids and asked him not to eat that way, because it was really bad manners. He said it wasn't. Who is right?

To add: this was just one example. If it's mixable, it gets mixed up. Cottage pie, fish pie, lasagne, pasta, curry and rice - it all turns into a big plate of mush.

There is also a sub-question: is it rude to cut your food into small pieces before eating it? By which I mean, cutting everything into small bite size pieces before starting to eat. Again, I say it is, dh says it isn't. (This is what he does with food that is less easily mushed up - e.g. something like chops, new potatoes and vegetables.

If you rarely eat together and it upsets you would it be appropriate to eat something like pasta, casserole, stirfry etc on that day? I'm thinking something thats already mixed and cut up.

Slightly different but DS1 is autistic and dyspraxic and has difficulty cutting food and chewing. To get around this when out we order selectively off menus and when entertaining I prepare foods that I don't need to highlight this issue by citting his up for him.

Everyone is very tolerant on here.

This would drive me completely insane! Is he 2? If not, why is he eating like a toddler? It's completely puerile and incredibly uncouth.

I have zero tolerance on bad table manners.

But the pie is pre-mixed! It doesn't need mixing with anything! OP, YANBU.

My PILs mix together the ends of takeaway curries so it all goes in one bowl. Yuk. I would never eat a pre-mixed chicken/beef/prawn jalfrezi/madras/dopiaza (although they are lovely separately).

Neither would I mix together coffee and tea.

It is bad manners, and fairly disgusting tbh. It's insulting to the cook.

It's not rude at all. It tastes nice to eat food that compliments another food together in one bite. I don't want to eat a bit of carrot, then a bit of gravy, then a bit of dry sausage, or whatever, just one taste at a time; I want a bit of a few things at once. I wouldn't do it at a posh restaurant (in the unlikely event I was in one)! It does look a bit childish I suppose. But it's not rude!

Oh, I wouldn't like this at all.

I don't think I'd call it rude, but it is very childish (IMO). Does he do it in restaurants?

God, no, YANBU. I would find this quite repellent, and insulting if I had taken the time to make a nice meal.

It wouldn't impress me.

I'll cut a lasagne into smaller pieces to help it cool at a sensible rate, but those pieces are still big enough to cut as I go.

Something saucy like curry or chilli with plain rice are Ok to mix as the rice is quite bland. The rice is also in small grains anyway.

Never mix or mash you food. So there, haters.

There is a world of difference between combining foods on your plate (I don't do a whole plateful, but will do it in a particular spot on my plate if I'm eating something saucy) and talking with a mouthful of food.

The latter looks and sounds unpleasant and is potentially unhygienic as you're at risk of spraying food and saliva as you speak. The former is merely aesthetically unpleasing to anyone who is too busy looking at other people to mind their own.

Some etiquette around eating is common sense, but much of it is pure snobbery.

I think it is far ruder to criticise how someone eats their food, then to encourage your children to criticise an adult for how he eats his food, and then to be insulting and say people should have grown out of that by 6. Those things id consider incredibly rude and disrespectful.

But WHY is it rude? It doesn't create a bad smell, or mean she sees him masticating his food, or imply the food is unpleasant. It's just a way of eating. I can not see a single reason why this would be rude.

That would annoy me but I do appreciate that I'm very squeamish about poor table manners. It's kind of how a small child would eat. YY to 'American style'. I live in the US for a brief stint and the first time someone put their knife down then proceeded to shovel food in with their fork, using it to gesticulate in my direction in between mouthfuls, I was

I guess he can eat how he likes in his own home. If it's his only flaw, I think I could learn to shut it out. I would cringe if he did it in public though.

I think it's grim. YANBU.

I think it is far ruder to criticise how someone eats their food

not in your own home within your family when you are trying to educate your kids!

But WHY is it rude? It doesn't create a bad smell In the case of my DF it makes a horrible noise and a disgusting, brown shit-sludge sight.

Never eat with Dutch people*, OP. Typical meal times involve mashing it all together and devouring the lot with a generous helping of apple sauce.

I don't see the problem. It all gets mashed together in your mouth anyway.

*every Dutch person I've ever eaten with has done this, anyway.

I would not like it. Looking at a plate of mushed up food would be off putting for me. Unless it was baby food or medically necessary ok, otherwise it would bother me. But I am quite intolerant.

Then the noise is an issue, but there is no extra reason why this should be noisy. As for a chit-brown sludge, have you ever been presented with a beef casserole?

American etiquette is not to chop up the entire plate and then eat. They're supposed to cut one bite at a time, set the knife on the edge of the plate, switch fork to other hand, and place their free hand in their lap.

I think the essence of good manners is for people at the table to be comfortable. If three of the four don't like the sight of pre-chewed, brown sludge, sopped together and shovelled in, they trump the one who could just mix one mouthful at a time.

I may be working through some childhood trauma of my DF's repulsive manners. Not just table. He's a lovely man but urgh.

YABU what a silly thing to get annoyed by

I would be revolted if someone was eating like that every night in front of me - basically making their dinner into baby mush. YANBU!

Ugh I'm shocked how many people think it's perfectly reasonsble to mash up food like a baby - I'd be disgusted if an adult did that to a meal I'd made, whether at home or out.

If you want to mix up the meal take small bits of each part to eat together - it's not rocket science, mixing it all up is vile

Glad I won't be cooking for any of you manly lot!

One other thing - I didn't actually say anything about it being babyish, or even say it was disgusting. I just said "I wish you wouldn't eat it like that, because I don't think it's very good manners". The children didn't say anything at all, but complained to me afterwards because they find the "plateful of baby food" look quite off-putting. Dh just said he couldn't see the problem.

He has had this habit since I met him, but I think there was something about the particular combination of foods on his plate this latest time - maybe it was the sweetcorn and carrots, but I guess it didn't look dissimilar to vomit by the time he had finished mixing it. That lovely lunch I had spent a couple of hours preparing - home-made pie filling, home-made flaky pasty. Vegetables. Resembling vomit without any assistance from his digestive system.

Too right I was annoyed. Unreasonable or not.