Who invented the first eating utensils

According to the California Academy of Sciences, which houses the Rietz Collection of Food Technology, chopsticks were developed about 5, years ago in China. The earliest versions were probably twigs used to retrieve food from cooking pots. In Southeast Asia, rice is not eaten with chopsticks. A fork and spoon is used for jasmine rice, and hands are used for sticky rice.

Observe some Asians eating rice. Benefits of chopsticks include more effective weight loss, coordination training, lowering of food glycemic index, and many others. This traditional Asian alternative to silverware can be a great help for your entire family and they are fun to use.

Crossing your chopsticks is taboo, as it is a symbol of death. Pretend that the utensils are attached; they should always be used together. Chopsticks are, inarguably, the single most important eating utensils in Japan. Chopsticks, though still old, only date back to about 5, years ago, to China.

Because the bites were so small, they no longer needed knives while they ate and twigs were at the ready to transport piping hot food to the mouth before it began to cool. These twigs spawned chopsticks. By CE, such utensils spread to most of the Asian countries. As you can imagine, this made dinner slightly uncomfortable. They would use their sharp knives to spear the food, not cut it, simply eating directly off the knife. They're some of the most simple, but useful, devices in existence.

They're used the world over. But who, exactly, invented knives, forks and spoons? Spoons are one of the oldest eating utensils on the planet. Unlike knives and forks, that for the most part needed to be fashioned, natural spoons could be utilized by employing such things as seashells or conveniently shaped stones.

There is no definitive time period that can be attributed with the invention of the spoon. Made from materials such as ivory, wood, flint and slate, these spoons were covered in ornate decorations and hieroglyphics. When it came to actually consuming food, the most common material at the time for spoons was wood due to its availability and low cost.

However, during the Greek and Roman empires, spoons made of bronze and silver were commonplace among the wealthy. This remained true up to and through the Middle Ages. Similar to the Egyptians, spoons at this time were not merely used for eating, but also in ornate ceremonies and to demonstrate wealth and power. For example, the coronation of every British king was proceeded by a ritual where the new monarch would be anointed by a ceremonial spoon. Spoons were granted even further importance during the Tudor and Stuart periods when it became customary to give an Apostle Spoon as a christening gift.

The particularly wealthy gave a set of twelve of these spoons, and eventually a thirteenth was added. This practice gave birth to the tradition of christening spoons and was prevalent throughout all societal classes at the time. The only difference was the material from which these spoons were made — typically silver or gold for the upper classes and copper or brass for the lower. The design of the spoon changed throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods before finally receiving its current mostly standard look around the 18 th century.

Since then, spoons have continued to be a staple of modern tables and come in a wide array of variations — everything from soup to caviar spoons. The most recent addition to the common cutlery club is the fork.