Sit up straight! What is the point of table manners?

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Explainer | Don’t put your elbows on the table, don’t talk with your mouth full. Who made up these rules, and what are they for? tablemanners

It was once an article of faith, in some Australian families, that one should be fully equipped to dine with the Queen.

And yet, every family follows table manners in its own way, from those who pepper their urbanity with the odd broken rule – “Whoops, I may have just passed the port to the right!” – to those whose impulses override etiquette – “I totally [crunch, crunch, crunch] disagree!” . Ghazzi, she says, warns against dining types such as the annihilator who leaves “only scattered bones in his wake”and – shudder – “the one who leaves greasy traces” .Sociologist Norbert Elias put 1000 years of European manners under the microscope in his 1939 study, studded with gems fit to make readers chortle now that manners have evolved.

The perils of eating too quickly, illustrated in “Deportmental ditties: and other verses” in London in 1900.“I was brought up to have table manners,” says celebrated chef and author Tony Tan, who grew up in coastal Kuantan in Malaysia, eating Indian, Chinese and Malay cuisines with chopsticks, hands, spoon and fork. The Federation of Malaya became independent of the British in 1957. Tan’s parents ran rest houses for the British, his mother cooking roast chicken and trifle for the guests.

Naturally, it was “the duty of Australian women” to ensure the development of this moral fibre, with a view to Australia becoming “the best society of any country”. Colonists were advised to practise their table etiquette at home, even when eating alone, lest they become “stiff and awkward” when out.Tyrell Collection: Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences

Today in Australia, says Santich, “You look at people in restaurants. There are ways that some people hold their knife and fork that would have been frowned on, or even a more American style [where diners cut one piece of food, put the knife down, transfer an upturned fork to the knife hand, then use it to bring the cut morsel to their mouth] – you wouldn’t have been allowed to do that.

As Tan notes, in Chinese cuisine “everything is cut up into small pieces, so there’s no need to use a knife”.

 

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It is called manners

what about the stupid eating off the back of the fork....ffs you had to somehow push food onto the back of the fork then delicately balance the food to place it into your mouth 😂🤣😂😂

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