ONEHANDED FOOD

one-handed food: translation

n.

Food that is small enough to hold in one hand and is not messy to eat so that it can be consumed while driving or working.

"Fast-food restaurants have succeeded best with 'one-handed food,' because the majority of fast-food patrons eat in the car."

— Mary E. Corcoran, "Changing a habit isn't an issue of immediate gratification,"The Kansas City Star, September 10, 1996

More Americans than ever are trying to 'eat and . . . ' — eat and walk, run, read, work or watch television, or even drive a car. They need what market researchers call 'commuter food,' 'finger food' or 'no-think food.' Mona Doyle, president of the Consumer Network in Philadelphia, which monitors the attitudes of 3,500 shoppers, calls it 'one-handed food.' Ideally, she said, it requires no utensils and does not drip, crumble or demand inordinate attention on its path from hand to mouth.

— Trish Hall, "Now, Food For the Otherwise Engaged,"The New York Times, April 15, 1987

I first saw the phraseone-handed foodused in a story earlier this year about a new product being carried by 7-Eleven: macaroni and cheese covered in dough and served on a stick. [Insert shudder of disgust here.] Delving a little deeper into this phenomenon (that is, theone-handed foodphenomenon, not the macaroni-on-a-stick phenomenon; the latter I'm hoping to soon shove into an unused corner of my brain where it will hopefully never impinge upon my consciousness again), I traced the concept all the way back to 1987.

al desko

auto-eating

continuous partial attention

cup-holder cuisine

dashboard dining

deskfast

drive-through cuisine

fakeaway

fast-casual

fast-food cluster

fast-food zoning

food futurist

home meal replacement

hurry sickness

pluot

portafuel

qwerty tummy

slow food

speed scratch

tomacco

Food and Drink