Table Manners: Eating Like A Pig
Gareth Knight wishes we’d take time over our food.
25 Jan 2012, 09:45
Messy Eaters
I’m quickly discovering that if you write on this site about something entirely unrelated to politics, elections or rugby, my usual topics of choice, you wake up a fair number of people who contact you privately to agree with you but they’re too embarrassed to say so publicly.
Manners and basic etiquette seem to be almost universally accepted as the building block of how we function as a civilised society, so why are we ashamed of discussing them?
A few days ago I wrote about mobile phones and the condiment culture and today I move on to two other table manner pet hates.
For some, eating like a dog is a sport but for the rest of us it’s disgusting. Eating as if your plate will be whipped away at any second makes it impossible to appreciate and enjoy the food that’s been prepared for you – you cannot savour the effort by eating so quickly and this is a big insult to the chef.
Brits in American restaurants are often taken aback at how quickly fellow diners seem to vacate their tables – a British couple that books a table for 8pm would not expect to leave much before 10pm whereas many Americans seem to be in and out within 45 minutes. Some restaurants in America, even the good ones, seem to pride themselves on their speedy service as if eating is a chore, something you have to do to stay alive, rather than something you want to do because you enjoy it.
Wolfing down your food isn’t just bad for etiquette reasons either. Ask any dietician and they’ll tell you that eating too fast not only leads to gastrointestinal problems but it’ll also make you fat as you’ll eat more and more food. It’s rare I’d ever quote Gillian McKeith but one thing she was right about was “chew your food properly!”. I’ll leave it to qualified nutritionists to explain but basically if you eat quickly your stomach can’t keep up with your mouth and the receptors that tell you you’re full don’t kick in until you’re absolutely stuffed, consequently you consume more calories than you would if you take your time.
It’s no coincidence that fatter people eat faster and need larger portion sizes – their bodies are struggling to keep up with their eating speeds and they’ve already shoved more food way before they feel full.
If you see eating as little more than consuming, like the need to refuel a car, just stick to protein shakes.
This is a similar problem to eating too fast but eating massive mouthfuls of food has the added problem that you’re far more likely to feel obliged to open your mouth with food in it should someone speak to you. Some almost see it as an achievement, as if those student games of trying to fit as many Maltesers in your mouth never quite came to an end.
Some of the blame for this goes to some TV show judges who taste food as they take pieces of every element on the plate into their mouths at the same time – quite how they can assess food by loading so much onto their fork is beyond me. So few people actually eat like that and just because there are different elements of a dish on a plate does not mandate the person eating to have it all at once!
This problem is not confined to the dinner table - the finger buffet and canapé sees the problem at drinks receptions too. How many times have you taken a canapé and had to make a judgement call, do you bite it in half and risk it falling apart or do you down it in one even though it’s too large? Why is it that when venues put together a menu for a drinks reception they don’t consider how difficult it may be to eat a large or fancy canapé when you have a glass in the other hand? The floor ends up covered in bits of food and you see people juggling their glass, their canapé and their serviette as they desperately try to hold down a conversation while eating the very nice but very impractical canapé. Whatever you do, you can guarantee that at the moment you put it in your mouth someone will ask you a question to which you cannot answer because you have food in your mouth.
Next up: wasting food and fussy eaters
Comments (3)
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It's simple. Eat like a pig and end up looking like one.
25/01/2012 15:36"Some restaurants in America, even the good ones, seem to pride themselves on their speedy service as if eating is a chore, something you have to do to stay alive, rather than something you want to do because you enjoy it."
Or as if they don't see any virtue in keeping people waiting! I certainly don't see slower service as a positive feature, whether you're paying £10 or £100. I might take my time eating the food when it does arrive, but time spent sitting waiting for my order to reach me is time wasted.
I do tend to eat the items more or less individually though, to taste each separately.
With canapes, I have come to appreciate the little plastic hooks some places attach to the plates, so you can hold both plate and glass in one hand leaving the other free to eat with. If you don't have a usable plate, you're left with the bigger dilemma: dart to and from the buffet table every mouthful so others get a chance, hover near it so you can get each mouthful without a ridiculous delay, or miss out on most of it?
26/01/2012 22:03James - you're right that I wasn't at all clear. Good speedy service is very different to rushing diners through!
Those little plastic hooks were great, though I always think they'll fall off with the glass in!
28/01/2012 14:55