COMMUNAL EATING CONCERNS.
Chinese authorities urge use of spoons, serving chopsticks
Responsible for flight cancellations, school closures, and warnings not to kiss pets lest you infect your dog, coronavirus has forced many lifestyle changes around the world. With entire cities in China under lockdown in an attempt to contain COVID-19, millions of people are making do with the supplies at hand.
Now, it seems the outbreak may affect not just what we eat, but the way we eat it.
A grassroots movement — called the “war against the epidemic at the tip of your tongue” — is targeting communal eating in China, Al Jazeera reports. Led by a coalition of state-run media, catering associations and citizen organizations, the campaign promotes the use of serving spoons and “public” serving chopsticks (as opposed to one’s personal chopsticks) to help halt the spread of coronavirus.
The specifics of transmission are still unfolding, but researchers do know that like the common cold and flu, respiratory droplets (expelled from an infected person’s nose or mouth when they breathe, cough or sneeze) are a culprit.
When these contaminated droplets are inhaled, or they somehow find their way into an unaffected person’s eyes, mouth or nose — by touching a contaminated object, for example, and then touching one’s own face — the disease can spread.
The underlying assumption — that COVID-19 can spread via eating utensils — is unproven, as is the idea that the disease can be transmitted through food in general. “We are not aware of any reports at this time of human illnesses that suggest COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging,” a U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokesperson said in a statement.
While there’s no direct scientific evidence supporting the link between communal eating and coronavirus, several medical experts suggest that sharing dishes with individual utensils should be avoided. Study is needed, but saliva on eating utensils could conceivably play a role in contagion.
“Some pathogens (or) germs can be transmitted by the sharing of utensils,” Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO), told
Al Jazeera. “The risk of spreading COVID-19 through sharing of utensils is not yet known, but plausible based on current knowledge.”
A veteran of the 2003 SARS outbreak, Ronald St. John, former director general of the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the Public Health Agency of Canada, was in agreement. “The virus can be transferred from saliva to chopsticks to the common dish, and depending on the temperature, the virus would survive to be transferred to the next person via their chopsticks,” he reportedly said.
Shared dishes are at the heart of Chinese food culture, whether at home or at restaurants. According to Global Times-jiemian, though using gongkuai (serving chopsticks) isn’t seen as a slight, “many people still use sikuai, their personal chopsticks, when eating with others.”
Eating individual dishes in China, a custom called fencan, can reportedly be traced back to before the Zhou dynasty (1046256 BCE). It wasn’t until the Song dynasty (960–1279) that communal eating — gongshi — took hold. From outbreaks of the plague to hepatitis, and SARS to COVID-19, reintroducing fencan has repeatedly been brought forward as a potential solution.
Local governments throughout China are also encouraging the use of serving utensils, including in its largest city, Shanghai. On Feb. 23, authorities in the metropolis launched a public awareness campaign promoting the use of gongkuai to “reduce infections” and “eliminate germs.” One hundred restaurants in the city jumped aboard the following day, the Global Times reports, saying they would supply serving utensils for each dish.
SOME PATHOGENS (OR) GERMS CAN BE TRANSMITTED BY THE SHARING OF UTENSILS