Okay, Westerners, I feel it is finally time to level with you about something. It might be tough to hear this, but I think you can handle it. Just know, I tell you this out of love and a desire to improve the conditions you live it.
You are eating salad wrong. Put down the fork. There is a better way.
There, I’ve finally said it, and I feel much better for having done so.
Seriously, people, the goddamned fork is entirely the wrong tool for the job here. Think about it. You get those last pieces of lettuce laying at the bottom of the dish; too thin to spear, too small to fold in half, just sliding around mocking you! And maybe some fucked-up sociopath put corn or some kind of beans in the salad. What then fork users? Huh?! What now?!
I tell you what now: you’re stuck there trying to coral those little shits like a toddler.
Don’t even get me started on cherry tomatoes. Little motherfucker skids out from under the fork points and sprays dressing up into your eyes as it does. Mocking you all the way.
But it doesn’t have to be this way! Chopsticks, I say! Chopsticks!
The correct implement for eating salad is chopsticks. You have now been told. If you persist in this fork nonsense, you have no one but yourself to blame for your suffering.
Now, the ethnocentric among you might be looking to get choleric and competitive about this, and I’ll leave you to it. That’s fine. I’ll even provide you with some low-hanging fruit as a balm for your wounded cultural pride.
Why is it that cultures that eat so much rice do so with chopsticks? Isn’t a spoon the right tool for the job here? (Shout out to the Thais for figuring this one out.)
It’s a good question. (However, keep in mind that rice is supposed to be sticky, and there are chopstick techniques to deal with the issue, so it’s not as clear cut as you’d expect.)
Be that as it may, this doesn’t change the truth I’ve laid on you today.
Put down the fork and eat your salad with chopsticks like a civilized human being.
Muse Vassal 