There’s this stat I heard a little while ago. Roughly a third of the word eats with their hands, another third uses forks and knives, and the other third uses chopsticks.
I thought this was a fun bit of knowledge, but I had to fact check to see if the numbers added up.
They did… sort of. But this is actually a pretty complicated stat.
How do you account for all the Chinese families in the US & Canada using chopsticks?
Or the countries that kind of use different methods at different times?
Or the differences between urban and rural settings?
Plus… I first heard this stat over a decade ago. Since then, the eat-with-your-hands countries have seen the highest population growth.
But nitpicky details aside, this is enough for me to appreciate the reality that our idea of “normal” is always skewed by our environment.