It’s the biggest love-hate food debate since Marmite.
Just how much force is justified to stave off food theft? A hasty jab with a fork, perhaps? Or is an indulgent smile the best response when your eating partner helps himself (or, more commonly, herself – but we’ll come to that later) to that tasty morsel you’ve been saving to relish at leisure?
Yes, the tricky business of stealing food from the plates of others is an issue that can provoke deep and seething resentment.
Picture the scene. You’re eating with a friend. There’s a plate of freshly grilled garlicky prawns before you. One prawn is just that bit plumper than its fellows. ‘I want you,’ you think, concealing a grin. But then your companion lunges – and the perfect prawn is gone from your plate.
How does that make you feel? Well, pretty damn bad if the experiences of bloggers are anything to go by. A quick Google of the subject reveals unforeseen depths of anguish. ‘Is there some sort of mental disorder that causes people to prefer eating off OTHER people’s plates?’ appeals one plaintive blogger, whose wife fixes his plate with a strange, weasel-like stare before being overcome by dinnertime kleptomania.
Others rail against the germy horrors of other people’s saliva-encrusted forks, or sneeringly describe dinner scavenging as ’an instant dumpable offence’. Yet more reveal the furtive guilt of the compulsive food snatcher, and even confess to swiping food from their own children.
So widespread is the problem that urbandictionary.com has two words relating to the act of stealing food from another’s plate – ‘dingo’ (as in ‘Oi, dingo, leave my food alone’) and ‘serial foodaphile’, which relates to ‘One who takes advantage of others for their food’.
Helen, pictured with Marco Pierre White.