13 Dining-Related Taboos from Around the World

Visit different countries, and you’re bound to experience cultural differences—especially at the dinner table. Here are some things to help you mind your manners, wherever you’re traveling next.

China

1. According to Chinese tradition, long noodles symbolize a long life. If you’re lucky enough to eat a big steaming bowl of long noodles, don’t cut them—it means cutting a long life short.

2. While eating at the table, you should never point your chopsticks at another person.

3. Flipping a cooked fish that is on your plate is a serious no-no. If you do, you’re inviting bad luck into your life. The tradition stems from Chinese fisherman rituals. While eating, the fisherman would not turn over the fish because they feared it would cause their boats to capsize on their next trip. Instead of flipping the fish, you should pull the flesh from beneath it.

Japan

4. While eating at the dinner table in Japan, chopsticks should never be wielded to pass food between two people. Chopsticks are used to pluck bones from the ashes after cremation, and by replicating this same gesture at the dinner table, you are both dishonoring a funeral tradition and creating bad luck.

5. Chopsticks have another function for funeral traditions in Japan. In the home, families stick chopsticks vertically into bowls of rice as an offering to the dead. The vertical chopsticks also symbolize incense burned to sacrifice this dead. You should never place chopsticks vertically in a bowl of food at a restaurant; the gesture is believed to put a curse on the restaurant owner. These beliefs are also the same in Chinese and Korean culture.

United Kingdom

6. As a sign of proper manners in the UK, you should always tilt a bowl of soup away from you while you are eating from it. Manners also dictate that you should spoon the soup away from you, toward the opposite side of the bowl while you’re eating; this is also proper etiquette in the United States.

Korea

7. As a sign of respect in Korea, you should never begin eating at the dinner table until the eldest or most senior person has begun eating.

United States

8. It’s illegal to eat watermelon in public parks within Beech Grove, Indiana. The law was created because an abundance of disposed watermelon rinds punctured the trash bags and caused a mess.

9. In Gainesvilla, Georgia, you need to ditch the utensils when eating fried chicken—it’s illegal to consume it with anything but your bare hands. In 2009, one resident was arrested as a prank for committing the crime—i.e., eating her fried chicken with a fork—on her 91st birthday. Luckily, it was all a joke played on her by a friend, and the charges were dismissed.

Italy

10. While dining in Italy, you should never ask for extra cheese unless it is offered to you. It’s seen as a challenge of the chef’s cooking abilities.

Tanzania

11. While you might think it’s polite to show up just a few minutes early for a dinner party in America, it is actually rude to show up early for dinner in Tanzania. Guests should always arrive 15 or 20 minutes late for a meal to be polite.

Russia

12. If you finish a bottle of vodka, the empty bottle should always be placed on the ground. Russians believe that placing an empty bottle back on the table causes bad luck.

13. Food should never, ever be licked off of a knife. The act is considered rude and a sign of poor manners. Some would even consider you a savage, as it can also be interpreted as a sign of cruelty to lick a utensil that cut through your food.

Read More Stories About Food:

A version of this story originally ran in 2014; it has been updated for 2024.