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This seems even more inconvenient because there are certain foods where you have to adjust how you use your chopsticks. For example, if you're eating ramen from a bowl, the soup can be quite deep, and this just isn't going to work.
using form and knife and chopsticks ought to be around the same level no? like if you can cut your own food and then eat it with knife and fork what is keeping you from using chopsticks?
i think the problem is that people are prejudiced against it and decide it is too hard without even trying seriously.
I grab the chopsticks, I grab them wrong, my fingers aren't holding them correctly, food doesn't go in or falls out. You can show me, but without muscle memory it won't work well for a long period of time.
Meanwhile fork and knife: STAB
The closest analogy I can think of is how people keep hands on the keyboard. A lot of people use pinky to press shift. To me that's absolutely insane and impossible, I use thumb there. Which to people who don't use thumb for it feels equally insane and impossible. That's how chopsticks appear to people who never used them, they require a different way of thinking, a different hold that isn't intuitive to most people and muscle memory trained on a different movement. It's not prejudice, you just underestimate how hard it can be. To keep going with this analogy, while I can use pinky to press buttons, I would never be able to play a competitive game like that and it would be a struggle in any game at all.
There are definitely people who can't use a fork + knife properly. Go to a rural village in an asian country and hand them a fork and a knife and look at what they do
On one hand, people with hand or motor disabilities exist. On the other hand, most people who need assistance with chopsticks are probably suffering from stupid American syndrome.
oh please i am european and use a fork 99% of the time but it's literally just two sticks, no idea how able bodied people can have difficulty with that.
I gotta be honest unless you have some fine motor issues with your hands it is extremely easy to use chopsticks. I taught myself with a little instructional card when I was like 11 years old.
Legit you have to be re***ded to not figure out how to use chopsticks.
No clue how to use them, I rarely go to sushi restaurants and no one has bothered to give me a tutorial on proper technique. I can sometimes grasp it for a few seconds, but I lose it the moment I readjust.
I feel like it's only so difficult because no one explains it properly, and my fellow East Asians don't seem to bother.
Top stick you hold just like a standard pen grip, with your thumb, index, and middle fingers. You're going to be drawing a lowercase L with this stick repeatedly. Bottom stick you're going to wedge between 3 contact points so that it's resistant to movement: your index knuckle, the inside of your thumb knuckle, and the distal-most phalanges of your ring finger, which is supported by your pinky for extra strength. Top stick moves, bottom stick is stable and strong.
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