Separate food and chopsticks but not love, let’s have a civilized dining table with “Chopsticks”!

For a period of time, eating together has been a dining habit for Chinese residents. Chinese people like to toast, pick up dishes, and clink glasses at the table, expressing the affection and friendship in their hearts.

Dining together is full of dangers!

There are more than 300 kinds of bacteria and viruses in the human mouth. When people pick up food from a plate with chopsticks at a dinner party, these bacteria and viruses will enter the mouths of different people through saliva and start a "roller coaster" in the digestive tract or respiratory tract. "Oral transmission" is the culprit of this epidemic - an important route of infection for the new coronavirus. The most harmful "orally transmitted" bacteria is Helicobacter pylori.

Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium that lives in the stomach and duodenum and has very strict requirements for growth conditions. It is a common first-class carcinogen. It can cause gastritis, peptic ulcers, lymphoproliferative gastric lymphoma, and the poor prognosis is gastric cancer, which is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world and ranks second among the causes of cancer death.

After being infected with Helicobacter pylori, most patients do not have any symptoms in the early stage of infection, but some may develop symptoms of acute gastritis. About 30% of infected people will develop chronic gastritis, about 20% will develop peptic ulcer, and some will develop gastric cancer.

Separate meals, a tradition also existed in ancient times

Some conservative people think that separate dining is a way of learning from Europe and America, worshipping foreign things and abandoning our traditional food culture, which has weakened human relationships. In fact, separate dining was practiced in ancient my country for a long time, starting from the Shang and Zhou dynasties.

The Book of Rites records that the emperor has five layers of seats, and the princes have three layers of seats. The seats here mean that each person has a table. This was also the case in the Qin and Han dynasties. Everyone is familiar with Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Western Chu. In 206 AD, Xiang Yu hosted a Hongmen Banquet for Liu Bang. Historical records show that Xiang Yu sat facing east, Fan Zeng sat facing south, and Pei Gong sat facing north. Although they were in the same room, they sat at separate tables. Shared dining did not gradually become popular until the Ming and Qing dynasties. Therefore, the separate dining system is not an imported product, but our own excellent traditional culture.

Using serving chopsticks to share meals can effectively prevent oral transmission of diseases

The separate dining system refers to a dining method in which catering service personnel or consumers use public tableware to distribute dishes and use personal tableware to eat. The main forms of separate dining include separate dining at seats, separate dining at tables, separate dining at service counters, separate dining for each person, and separate dining at buffets.

The public chopstick system refers to the use of public chopsticks or spoons and forks to share food at Chinese banquets. We should not only use public chopsticks to share food when dining out, but also advocate the use of public chopsticks and spoons at home. Everyone uses their own bowl, chopsticks and spoon to eat, and public chopsticks and spoons are placed on each dish, pot and other containers for food, and everyone uses public chopsticks and spoons to serve food.

In terms of child feeding, children should be taught and encouraged to eat independently as early as possible. For infants and young children who cannot eat independently, guardians should use appropriate methods such as serving chopsticks to feel the temperature of the food. It is strictly forbidden to taste children's food with mouths, help children chew food, or share tableware with children.

Promoting the use of separate chopsticks for dining should start with ourselves. It can not only prevent the spread of diseases through the mouth, but also promote the excellent traditional culture of our nation and bring back the good eating habits in Chinese history. In fact, it is also a kind of return and innovation. In this way, our lives will be better and healthier!