Skip to content
Eat with your hands episode artwork

May 8, 2024 30 min

Eat with your hands

from The Food Chain Hosted by BBC World Service

Why eat with your hands? Many food cultures around the world eat using hands, and most of us use our hands some of the time. Do we really need cutlery or chopsticks to eat a salad, peas or rice? And if you were to tackle soup or stew with your hands, how would you go about it? Michael Kaloki reports from Nairobi, Kenya, where the staple dish ugali, made from maize flour, is traditionally eaten by hand. Michael has observed that people increasingly use cutlery to eat the dish, and he speaks to restaurateurs and customers about why that might be, and what might be lost. Ruth Alexander learns about the etiquette of eating by hand with food writer and consultant Karen Anand in India. And Ruth explores whether food might be more enjoyable, and even taste better, when eaten by hand. Psychologist Professor Charles Spence from Oxford University, and chef Jozef Youssef of Kitchen Theory in the UK share their research. If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected] Presented by Ruth Alexander. Produced by Beatrice Pickup. Reporting by Michael Kaloki in Nairobi, Kenya. (Image: a man’s hands, pulling apart a sweet cake wrapped in dough, with sauce on his hands. Credit: Getty Images/ BBC)

Episode details come from the podcast's RSS feed.

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Eat with your hands

0:00 30:31

No transcript yet.

Requests help us decide what to transcribe next.

Frequently asked questions

How long is this episode of The Food Chain?

This episode is 30 minutes long.

When was this The Food Chain episode published?

This episode was published on May 8, 2024.

Can I download this The Food Chain episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.