Italians are serious about their pasta. Many people know that pasta is a staple food in Italy and that citizens eat it regularly, but Italians are also often strict about the . Their technique involves a very precise way of twirling long strands around the tines of a fork.
It's never cut, broken, dangled in the air, or chopped up with a knife. It's hard to believe, then, that these pasta perfectionists once used their hands to eat it. Specifically, it was the poor citizens of Naples who basically made eating pasta with their bare hands a spectator sport of sorts from the 17th to the 19th century.
Since the 1300s, the fork had become the eating utensil of choice when it came to pasta, but it was also something that the wealthy ate, not so much the lower classes of Italian society. By the 1600s, pasta was much more affordable and people in Naples began to make it in huge quantities, the city eventually becoming the center of pasta production in Italy. Naples sought to take full advantage of its newly-acquired reputation.
For the entertainment of tourists, pasta street vendors would scoop out portions of freshly boiled spaghetti and give it to peasants nicknamed "macaroni eaters" (at the time, the word "macaroni" was used to describe any cut of pasta). These hungry performers would eat the hot noodles in one gulp with their bare hands for the smiles and laughter (and money) of the tourists. It was an early form of , in a sense, except there were no lavish prizes for the victors.
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