The first tool we learn to use is the simple spoon. After four or five months of ingesting nothing but milk and formula, babies get the taste of pureed fruit spooned from a little glass jar—the one with a picture of a happy baby on the label. That smiling baby is Ann Turner Cook, who died just two years ago at the age of 95 after having been the face of Gerber’s Baby Food since 1928.
With five younger siblings, I was often given the job of feeding the younger ones, and I usually ate more than they did. Whenever I got caught, my mother would take the spoon and smack me on the back of the noggin with it. Baby food in jars is delicious. I still like it to this day, except for the green peas.
After a while, parents put the spoon in their baby’s hand with hopes that after a few lessons it can find its own mouth. Some babies take to this skill readily. Most don’t and seem to find great enjoyment in making a mess. It’s wise to start training babies to eat with a spoon instead of a fork.
We don’t really need cutlery to feed our faces. It would be easy enough to just pick up food with our fingers and shove it right in. Most Mexican food can be eaten in this manner. Beans and rice can be easily scooped up with a chip, and tacos aren’t made to be eaten with a fork. Neither is a burrito. Many people in Indian, Middle Eastern, and African societies eat with their hands at every meal.
You might think it would be difficult to eat grits and gravy with your fingers, but you would be surprised what you can do with a stiff piece of bacon and how much gravy a biscuit will sop up. It might’ve been a little messy, but I’ve had to do it.
Of course, we’re a bit more civilized than that. Our Western culture is more refined.
But it hasn’t always been that way. It took thousands of years before humans took to using spoons, knives, forks, and sometimes chopsticks. We have become so civilized we now have at our disposal: the spork - a combination of a spoon and fork; the knork - what you get when you mix a knife with a fork; the spife - when you merge a knife with a spoon, and finally, the sporf - a crazy mix-up of a knife, fork and a spoon. A little bit like a Swiss Army knife.
Our oldest eating utensil is the ever-popular knife. It’s been around since early humans found out they could sharpen stones with other stones and fight each other with them. Then, one day, one of the warrior’s wives asked to borrow her husband’s crude knife and discovered it was perfect for slicing up a piece of woolly mammoth or saber tooth tiger, and it became a staple in her cave kitchen. It was then discovered that after cutting the meat into bite-size pieces, it was easy enough to just stab it and put it in the mouth. That kept fingers from being so greasy.
Knives were pretty much the only tools at the dinner table until the spoon finally came along. It was difficult to slurp soup with bare hands, so ancient Greeks would attach sticks to seashells. This was good for both stirring and eating. Romans carved spoons from wood, while Egyptian pharaohs put elaborately engraved golden or silver spoons to their lips.
Knives and spoons were used for tens of thousands of years until forks came upon the scene just a short one thousand years ago. The first fork was used by the niece of the Byzantine emperor at her wedding in Venice in 1004. But she was considered a weirdo, and no one was impressed. It took 500 more years before the fork reappeared in 1533 when Catherine de Medici introduced it to the French Court. Its popularity took off, but at first, it was used only with exotic foods that would stain your fingers.
Americans didn’t adopt this new-fangled eating implement until the early 19th century. They considered it a European custom and refused to use it. Nevertheless, multi-tinned forks arrived on our shores from Germany and England and slowly became commonplace. Today, they’re at nearly every American table.
On the opposite side of the world, chopsticks have been used as the main eating utensil for around 5,000 years. They are made from wood, bamboo, and plastic, and some of the fancy ones are made from bone and ivory. Japan and China use over 70 billion chopsticks annually, causing a huge environmental impact on forests and the wood industry. Forks may be the best way to go, after all.
It doesn’t matter how you put food in your mouth. You can use a fork, chopsticks, or just your fingers. Just as long as you chew with your mouth closed.
Steve Reece is a writer and columnist for the Reporter. His books, “I Know a Few Dogs In Heaven” and "Fish from the Sky" are collections of his best columns and on sale at the Reporter. Email him at [email protected].
