EATING UTENSILS
According to the Japanese Restaurant Association, 1.5 billion people eat with knife, fork and spoon; 1.2 billion eat with chopsticks; 350 million eat with knife and hands; 250 million eat with hands only.
Most Americans did not begin using forks until the Civil war. Until then most used their fingers to eat, knives to cut their meat, and spoons with pencil-like handles to eat soups or stews. During colonial times forks were used in restaurants; at home they were mainly used in the kitchen and to hold meat while cutting it. As recently as 1897, British sailors could not use knives and forks to eat because it was considered unmanly.
Sheffield, England has been famous for it's excellent knives since the reign of Richard I, 1189-1199.
Spoons are as old as knives and both have been used to prepare and to eat food for many thousands of years.
New Jersey has a spoon museum with more than 5,000 spoons from every state and almost every country in the world.
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