抄録
Short size chopsticks have been increasingly used for take-out lunch or sushi boxes and long size sticks in high-class restaurants in Japan. It is not convenient, however, for most people to use short or long size chopsticks. We assume that there may be an appropriate size for chopsticks.
Although many studies have been conducted on the suitable length of chopsticks used at home, there have been few studies on that of “waribashi” or splittable chopsticks used in restaurants or for takeout food.
In this study, we examined the effect of the length of splittable chopsticks on the comfortability, convenience and efficiency to eat with, by selected female students as our panel. We asked them to eat sushi by using four types of chopsticks, L (long; 23.5cm), S (short; 16.5cm), M (medium; 20.2cm), and S' (special; 21.5cm) and then to evaluate them for the above three attributes.
It was found that S'chopsticks (1.25 times as long as the panelists' hands) were most comfortable to eat with, most convenient to pick up sushi with, and most efficient to cut seaweed with, and L and S chopsticks turned out to be most difficult to handle and A chopsticks were inbetween. It was also found by our subsequent experiment that S and L chopsticks did harm to the arms' muscle movement.
Because there is a significant correlation between the length of our hands and height, we can calculate the most suitable length of chopsticks from our height.
