For People with an APPETITE for LIFE!

Welcome to THE MAIN INGREDIENT a place where Food News, Food Politics, Food Culture, Food Fashion & Food Humour meet. Each week you can preview topical foodie matter from my 'Gourmet Lifestyle' radio show called (wait for it) THE MAIN INGREDIENT. Food for the belly & the brain, I hope you'll enjoy the journey with me. Regards Kel

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Are you a NORKER?


You know once upon a time it was a sign of social status to be able to successfully negotiate your way thru a huge line up of cutlery at a dinner party wasn’t it? You know the old salad fork, soup spoon, fish knife, dessert spoon & butter knife. But sadly it seems those days are almost gone. The KNORK is apparently what we humans are increasingly using in place of the traditional knife and fork to shovel food into our gobs. A fork with a serrated edge that can conveniently double as a knife. A TV Dinner was always something I associated with those ready made meals of the 60's (remember the old 'Vesta' curries?) but apparently we are now more than ever a tv dinner generation and we have absolutely no use for most of the items in our cutlery drawer, preferring to eat with our hands or shovel it in with the all purpose Nork. Plus! The 'NORK' has the added benefit of allowing us to be able to eat with one hand and keep the other on the all important remote control.


Now if you, like me, are at all concerned at our rapidly diminishing cutlery skills then you will be further dismayed to hear that one in ten young adults find even the 'NORK' an encumbrance, saying they regularly eat their evening meal using only their hands. A survey of 7,684 people by supermarket chain Sainsbury's has suggested that the busy lifestyles of working families have led to a wider reliance on 'finger food' with more than one in seven adults eating breakfast with their hands, and almost half of them tucking into a sandwich or wrap for lunch. To make matters worse around 5 per cent continue the habit when they get home, snacking solely on bitesize foods such as mezze and tapas. Now I LOVE fingerfood but I am a little concerned to discover that our current passion for little nibbly bits is challeging the traditional table setting of knife, fork and spoon. Apparently only just three per cent of those surveyed admit to using a full set of cutlery for breakfast. Ian Jarmarkier, the head of Sainsbury's Food and Innovation Centre, says this is a fascinating insight into how we eat now. 'It shows that the way that we eat food is evolving to match our changing, busy lifestyles. Although convenience eating these days by no means implies a trade-down in nutritional quality.' Yes but ahhhhhhh...... I did so love a good fork on the table!

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