Reading Notes: You Still Eat With Your Hands

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"Jesus certainly broke bread with his hands"
-An excuse I will now use at any point I wish to toss aside silverware and propriety and go at food with my hands

-In one of her shows, Oprah made a comment about how Indians "still eat with [their] hands"
     -For real, Oprah? That's pretty culturally insensitive 
-Long before cutlery in Europe there were chopsticks in China
     -The oldest ones were dated to 1000 BC and were made of bronze
-In the Middle Ages in Europe, food was eaten on stale bread called "trenchers"
     -Knives were used to impress rather than out of necessity 
-The fork introduced in France by Catherine de Medici
     -Also known as the "split spoon"
     -Forks became snobby and aristocratic under her
-Cutlery associated with imperialism, eating by hand associated with natives
-Cold climate = hand coverings = cutlery necessary, warm climate = cutlery not necessary

-The Vedas refer to food as a goddess
-The five fingers are "midget sages" called Valakhilyas
-The sages carry the goddess to the mouth; we eat her to sustain ourselves
-Jyotisha teaches us that the five fingers represent the five elements
     -Pinky: earth
     -Ring: water
     -Middle: air
     -Index: ether
     -Thumb: fire
-Eating by hand therefore symbolically connects the five elements 



The Elegant Spoon. Source: Pixabay


~~~

Bibliography:

Pattanaik, Devdutt. "You Still Eat With Your Hands."
https://devdutt.com/articles/you-still-eat-with-your-hands.html

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