To ask if you consider eating with your fork in the 'wrong' hand to be bad manners?

[Whatsername17]

Just that really. My right hand is my dominant hand, although for some tasks (like painting and cleaning) I tend to swap between my right and left hands. I eat with my fork in the right hand and knife in the left. Today someone was complaining that their kids eat the 'wrong way around' and that they were worried and felt it should be corrected. It made me feel a little self conscious tbh. Do people really care about which hand you have your fork in?

[shovetheholly]

I recently watched 2 young women (18-20ish) in a cafe doing this and it just looked so odd - they were behaving as if they had never encountered either food or cutlery before and just made a complete hash of eating their meal. In fact actually eating very little of it at all.

This can be a technique used by young women trying to diet, as part of the hideous pro-anorexia movement (along with other techniques like pinging yourself with rubber bands when you feel hungry). You may have witnessed something very different to incompetence.

[Tartyflette]

I recently watched 2 young women (18-20ish) in a cafe doing this and it just looked so odd - they were behaving as if they had never encountered cutlery before and just made a complete hash of eating their meal. In fact actually eating very little of it at all )

shove this is exactly what I meant upthread when I said I had seen this on several occasions, young people who could not handle cutlery at all, never mind in the correct or incorrect way.
I did consider that they might be A/ disabled or B/ anorexic but I saw no evidence of that, one looked to be on a date and her bf wasn't that great handling implements either, but they ate most of their pizza (yes, it WAS in Italy ) in the end although I had to avert my eyes, fascinating though it was , managed their icecreams fine, and walked /used phones/spoke apparently normally. Whatever that is.
But the cutlery handling was inept, to say the least. I felt some sympathy for them, it looked like they had no idea how to eat in a restaurant, they didn't even pick it up in their hands. Some people were eating with their hands, others (older) with cutlery. All fine.
I'm just bemused by it all.

[Tartyflette]

I think this little rhyme was around at a time when you were supposed to spear peas delicately with the tines of your fork, before conveying them to your mouth, two or three at a time. (Must have been tedious in the extreme.)
I eat my peas with honey
I've done it all my life
It makes them taste quite funny
But it keeps them on my knife!

[ForalltheSaints]

Not if you have the knife in the other hand.

[littleprincesssara]

Who eats pizza with cutlery?!