• Honestly for a lot of foods they’re really not a bad choice. They’re excellent for eating flavored chips when you dont want powder on your fingers, also grabbing things from jars

    • They are the best choice for salads. Eating salads with a fork sucks

    • I’ve gotta find someone with a 3D printer locally who can make me those fingy chopsticks for cheetos. I’m tired of cleaning my keyboard everytime I wanna snacc.

      • Please do not eat food served via a 3d printed tool/plate/bowl/cup. A number of the materials that are used for 3d printing are toxic (cross contamination is likely even if the material has been changed), and the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize.

        • and the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize

          This is a big reason why I don’t like plastic dishware, cups, etc even when they are made with food-safe materials.

        • the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize

          That’s putting it mildly - every 3D print has tons of small crevices and imperfections even just from the layer lines alone, it’s just completely impossible to keep a 3D print clean between repeated food contact. Unless it’s sealed with resin or similar, but that’s also not easy to get right.

        • When I was in Toronto, yeppers. Alas I’m on an island out in the middle of nowhere. I’m gonna have to find a 3D print shop or make a friend lol

          • Alas I’m on an island out in the middle of nowhere.

            It’s nice to hear from you again, and to be reminded of your living situation somewhere near Trailer Park Boys and Man in a Motel

  • I find it just fun to eat with them. In the end, it doesn’t matter as much how you are delivering food to your feeding hole.

  • Some fun chopstick facts: most chopsticks in the world (including China) are made in Georgia (the US state, not the country) because of the ready availability of cheap pine. One of the major reasons pine is so prevalent in Georgia (and in the US South in general) is slavery: cotton plantations in the pre-artificial fertilizer era tended to exhaust the soil after a few years, leaving pine trees as the only profitable crop that can be grown on much of the land.

    • Cotton is a destructive demanding crop. The post industrial era cotton farming has left swaths of land poisoned with arsenic and all sorts of nasties (chicken concentration camps are bad for arsenic too.)

      • (chicken concentration camps are bad for arsenic too.)

        This is caused by roxarsone in chicken feed. I think they stopped using it several years ago, but I’d expect that this has caused lasting damage in some places.

    • Most of the chopsticks I’ve seen have been hardwood, plastic or metal … I guess there’s more disposable ones by quantity in the world because most people don’t have or carry their own?

      • Anywhere you have trees there are chopsticks. The only time I use them is when I don’t have silverware in the wilds, either the wilds of the woods or the wilds of the endless wastelands of the automobile lands. Break off a couple twigs.

  • I’m passable with chopsticks, but I can’t think of any situation where I’d prefer them over other utensils.

    • 2 days

      Almost any pasta. Roasted or boiled veggies. Cheezits or similar, keeps the dust off. Pierogies, most snall dumplings really.

  • Who else goes through spoons quicker than any other utensils? In my household

      1. Big spoons
      1. Little spoons
      1. Chop sticks
      1. Knives
      1. Forks
      1. Butter knives
        • Get outta here Popeyes. Your tines are too short to grab the meat, and your ends are too pointy to gather the last 5%. I’d end up full of styrofoam, pawing at a bone like a kitten if I used you. My fingers and teeth work 100x better than you.

          Even if I’m backpacking and I need to save weight, I’d rather have a cat-dog version of spoon and fork.

        • 3 days

          I keep sporks in my car so if i’m starving after a shopping trip I can break into some grub.

    • 3 days

      i use what’s most convenient to grab… for instance i use a spoon, or even a fork, for making a pb&j far more often than a knife. there’s a better chance of those being out on the drying rack than a knife. if that means i’m eating ice cream with a fork, i’m eating ice cream with a fork - as long as it’s frozen enough.

    • Whatever falls into the sarlacc pit that is my garbage disposal goes first

    • Depends on what I made that week. If it’s a soup or stew, spoons are the first to go.

  • 3 days

    I live in Hawaiʻi. We use chopsticks all the time. Itʻs just… what you do.

    Whenever we get takeout and they give us forks instead of chopsticks, my wife and I refer to it as “getting haloeʻd” (for those who donʻt know, “haole” is a Hawaiian term for foreigner that tends be used exclusively for Caucasian people). Thereʻs a general assumption that most whites donʻt know how to use chopsticks. Related, I was once at a Japanese funeral, eating poke and sashimi with chopsticks, and this sweet lady comes up to me and says “you use those so well!” It felt like the white-person version of “youʻre so well-spoken!”

    • I stopped for dinner once at a Chinese restaurant in Mississippi run by people actually from China. I (white guy) used chopsticks and our server just stared at me wide-eyed for most of the meal. She said I was the first white person she had ever seen using them, and she’d been working there for years. That is Mississippi for you.

      I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d learned to use them eating at Japanese restaurants.

  • 3 days

    Chopsticks are the best utensils for eating chips(crisps in England). I love eating chips but i also love being on my computer. Why get chipdust everywhere when you can be clean?

    • I use it them when I douse cheetos with valentina. Two of the most finger stainingest foods known at this point in history.

      It’s like ambrosia for those of us awaiting cardiac release.

  • I avoid the chopstick places because I could never master them and I was tired of feeling like an ignorant buffoon. The surprise was, after more than 5 years of avoiding the chopstick places, I still felt like an ignorant buffoon.

  • Do it for the challenge! IV peaked at sub par but it’s still funner than a fork

  • There are foods that just don’t hit the same if you don’t eat them with chopsticks.

    Ever tried to eat sushi with a fork? It just feels wrong.

    But if it’s a rice bowl, screw the chopsticks. Gimme a spoon.