An uneducated guess would suggest that your eating habits have changed over the last year.  In the tradition of Carnac the Magnificent, I predict you have experienced a surge of take out eating.  If you are like me, you are more often eating in your car or in good weather, in an outdoor spot distanced from the crowd.  Sometimes it can feel like an epic picnic until you discover, you have nothing to eat with.  This has happened to me at least three times over the last year.  As a professional eater, I am aways ready for this circumstance because I have an “emergency kit in my car with a cork screw, zip lock bags, pocket knife, hand sanitizer and misc. plastic ware.  So I can save my own day. However, I have still had to improvise on my own a few times and when I’m not the driver, I am at risk for the “no flatware blues”. If you do not want to get “forked over” to you, try gosun Flatware.

This handy kit is the size of a credit card, dishwasher safe, and reusable.  A statistic on their packaging states that the average American uses 322 disposable plastic utensils per year.  So in addition to always being prepared to enjoy a meal on the go, you can also help reduce the massive amount of plastic filling our oceans and landfills.  Here is yet another spin for you to consider.  Yes, it can suck when you don’t get the needed plasticware for your takeway meal but in my case, more often than not, when I am eating I home, we get more than we need so what we receive gets wasted (we have an in-house Moratorium on filling our overflowing “emergency” plasticware box with anyone more spares).  When possible I will ask restaurant to “hold the plastic” if they can or they don’t ask themselves.

Many of us have been trying to figure out ways to help locally owned restaurants during the pandemic, it may seem like a small thing but asking them to hold the plasticware is not only good for the environment, it saves them money.  It may not seem like much but each disposable plastic spoon, fork and knife as well as every napkin, sauce pack and straw adds up to a lot of money over time.  I found this -> article breaking down the costs of your carry out meal.  Every bit makes a difference.

So if you are a tree hugger and equal opportunity eater like me wanting to do right by the environment while helping our my restaurant friends just say no to disposable plastic utensils and yes to an option like gosun flatware. It is a win win.

I did receive a complimentary set of gosun flatware for my services.  As mentioned in other posts, I don’t write about something I do not like.  In this case, there is a lot to like about this flatware. I mentioned the size before, and this product makes good use of space by being credit card sized.  Convenience is the key to behavior change so having your own flatware wherever you go makes doing the right thing that much easier.

The flatware set is the thickness of 4 credit cards, so it will not fit into the typical credit card slot in a leather wallet but it does fit snuggly in the the pocket that is typically underneath the slots or in the billfold section of a wallet. If you have a badge for work with a plastic holder, this would fit in with many work ID’s.

The fork works great.  The knife / spoon combo can cover the basics.  The knife does not have much of a serrated edge but it will cut cheese, donuts, and spread butter.  I’m not going to complain because a sharper edge would mean slicing my tongue.  The spoon is good for mashed potatoes, hummus, pudding and the like but trying to eat soup with it would be an exercise of Sisyphean futility.  Overall, this is a good option to have with you at all times.  I also like that the company practices what it preaches.  The packaging and the utensil holder are recyclable. The inside of the packaging has 6 detachable information cards featuring their website and a recycling fact (every day, enough plastic forks, spoons, and knives get thrown away to fill more than 3000 garbage trucks).

In a nutshell: Save your meal, save the environment and help our restaurant friends some money, by saying hold the plastic and using gosun flatware.

Now if they could somehow make a combination straw, ketchup dispenser and salt and pepper shaker that is the same size, I will be ready for any food emergency.

(No plastic spoons, knives or forks were wasted in the production of this post.)