While eating is intrinsically a simple thing – i.e. open mouth, insert food, chew, swallow – this basic part of life does come with its own set of subtle complexities. Although many foods are appealing and delicious, if they’re difficult to eat you can be put off altogether. There’s not a right or wrong way to eat, say, a pomegranate or chicken wings, but there certainly is an easier way than the one you’ve been following.
1. Toffee Apples: According to diet wellness expert Melissa Breyer, ‘Whether coated in a red sugary shell or drenched in gooey caramel, it would seem there is neither a graceful nor tidy way to eat a candy apple. You hold it by the stick and try your best, but inevitably the tips of the nose and chin become sullied with sugar. However…by simply turning the stick sideways and eating the apple a la corn on the cob — the traditional orientation in which you would eat an apple — much of the mess is mitigated.’
2. Cupcakes: ‘We know how you’re going to eat a cupcake,’ says Breyer. ‘If you’re like most people, you will take one of two approaches. You will either peel down the paper liner and attack it with your mouth as wide open as possible, resulting in a sore jaw and a flourish of frosting festooned across your upper lip and nose. Or, you will eat the frosting first and then precede with the cake. But there’s a way in which you can have your cupcake and eat it too, so to speak. Twist (or slice) the cupcake into two disks, flip the top upside down and place it, frosting-side down, back on the bottom half. The result? A sandwich-like cupcake that gives you cake and frosting in the same bite, minus frosting up the nose.’
3. Chicken Wings: ‘There may be no neat way to eat a chicken wing,’ Breyer admits. ‘A generally messy endeavour that would have sent any proper Victorian into a tizzy. But there is a way to get the most out of one; rather than gnawing about the thing like a caveman and leaving much meat behind, the slip-out-the-bone method results in a nice, easy-to-dip winglet with little meat wasted.’
4. Apples and Peanut Butter: Breyer notes, ‘Any apples-and-peanut-butter eater knows what happens in this situation: spread peanut butter on wedge-shaped slice of apple, watch peanut butter slide off into lap. The better way to do it is to core the apple, pack it with peanut butter, then slice into rings. Bonus tip: this also works wonderfully with semi-soft cheese or a good stinky blue.’
5. Pomegranates: ‘It’s possible that you’ve never eaten a pomegranate before, or if you have the mess and labour were too much to persuade you to do so again,’ Breyer comments. ‘But it doesn’t have to be that way. One popular method is to plunge the two halves of the pomegranate into a bowl of water and gently nudge the seeds from the membrane; the seeds float and it is pretty simple.’
6. Ketchup and Fries: Breyer asserts, ‘The tragedy of take-out fries is that they are accompanied by small ketchup packets that are squirted onto them; for people who don’t like their fries to become irrevocably soggy by swimming in ketchup, this is a problem. Or, was a problem. If you are a dipper with nowhere to dunk, just open the packet completely on one side and the packet becomes a small dipping cup. Alternatively, if your ketchup comes in a small paper cup that is too small for exuberant dippers, you can unfold the pleats and the cup will flatten into a small paper plate with a dollop of ketchup ready for service.’
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