In many places around the world today, when a person eats with hand instead of using cutlery e.g. spoon, fork, etc, the person is seen as uncivilised or an illiterate. Science has proven that eating with your clean hand actually does a lot of good for your body than using cutlery.
What the Science says about eating with your clean hand
Temperature Check: Your fingertips on your food act as natural thermometers. With your fingertips, you actually feel the temperature of your food, ensuring you don’t burn your tongue and can comfortably enjoy the necessary warmth of your dishes like jollof rice, eba with egusi, akpu with ogbona soup, etc.
Texture Awareness: Your fingers actually help you feel different parts of your food (e.g., bones, hot spots, uncooked parts, foreign materials like stone) before eating. This reduces the risk of choking, hurting your teeth or other parts of your mouth.
Advanced Preparation of Digestive Enzymes via Tactile Stimulation: Touching food activates nerve endings in the fingers, sending signals to the brain’s salivation and gastric centres. This primes the release of salivary amylase and gastric juices even before the food reaches the mouth. A 2015 study in Physiology & Behavior found that manual food handling increased cephalic phase digestive responses by ~30% compared to using cutlery.
Higher Meal Satisfaction: Touching food increases activation of the insula (brain region processing interoception and pleasure), leading to higher meal satisfaction and reduced post-meal cravings. Your food becomes “sweeter”. You enjoy it more. fMRI studies (e.g., Neurogastroenterology & Motility, 2018) show that haptic interaction with food before ingestion enhances reward-related neural responses, which can improve digestion efficiency via the gut-brain axis.
Improved Digestion through ‘Hand Flora’ Effect: The skin of the hands hosts a natural community of non-pathogenic bacteria that can contribute to oral and gut microbial diversity when transferred to food. Research in Frontiers in Nutrition (2019) suggests that moderate exposure to commensal skin bacteria via hands may help maintain a balanced gut microbiome, reducing risks of dysbiosis compared to overly sterile eating utensils.
Reduced Risk of Overeating (Portion Control): Eating with hands naturally slows down the eating rate because you take smaller, more deliberate portions. Slower eating is linked to earlier satiety signals (via PYY and GLP-1 hormones). A 2020 randomized trial in Appetite found that participants eating rice and curry with hands consumed 21% fewer calories than those using forks and spoons, with no difference in perceived fullness.
Lower Risks of Metal or Chemical Exposure: Cutlery made of certain metals (e.g., nickel, aluminum) or coated with non-stick materials (e.g., PFAS) can leach trace amounts into hot or acidic foods. A 2021 Environmental Science & Technology report found that some metal utensils release ions into food, while hand contact (with clean hands) introduces no such contaminants.
Important Note on Hygiene
You need to wash your hand properly with soap before eating. Otherwise, you might be inviting diseases to your body. We need to learn, unlearn and relearn to grow.
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