What does Licking Your Fingers After Eating Means?

After a meal, the habit of licking one’s fingers to express how delicious the meal was seems to be shared in popular culture. The association of “finger-licking good” with tasty cuisine is so widespread that it has become both an idiom and one of the most well-known food chains’ slogans.

Licking your Fingers Meaning

When someone uses “finger-licking” with “delicious,” they typically mean that the dish is so good, when eaten with your hands, that you lick your fingers afterward.

How to Lick Fingers After Eating

Of course, we should eat with our hands to get the pleasure of licking our fingers afterward. Avoiding the usage of spoons and other silverware is preferable. Islam holds that it is preferable to lick one’s fingers rather than clean them with a napkin or piece of cloth after eating.

Therefore, you may lick your fingers to remove any food that may have gotten on them. As per Islamic sunnah, if our spouse, parents, or kids are willing to do so, we can ask them to lick our fingertips. What you can do is as follows:

Hands should be washed before eating.
Before eating, say a prayer.
Eat food that is not overly spicy. When it’s too hot, let them cool.
Use only your right hand to eat.
Lick your fingers after you eat.
Remove the plate.
After your meal is finished, say a prayer.

This practice also relates to the idea that we should not miss any blessings we receive because every single bite of food is a blessing. There is a chance that the leftover food will be more beneficial than the other meal if we leave it on our hands rather than wiping it away.

The Advantages of Licking Your Fingers

Some might be unaware of the many advantages of licking one’s fingers after eating. Additionally, it may be healthy for your mental state. So what advantages do licking your fingers after eating have? Here are a few of the advantages.

Improving Immunity

In addition to using natural immunity-boosting supplements like Health Benefits of Goldenseal, we can boost our immunity by adopting certain routines. Licking your fingers after eating is one of the behaviors. The human hand is capable of excreting an RNA-based enzyme.

This enzyme can strengthen our immune system by acting as a bacteria binder. When we clean our hands, it functions effectively. As we all know, one of the methods to immediately clean our fingers from food and dirt after eating is to lick them. In this manner, licking your fingers after eating can enhance the RNase enzyme’s role in supporting our immune system.

Increase Bacterial Sensitivity

We can conclude that fingers and hands are where the bacteria reside. However, this does not imply that licking fingers always harms humans. Instead, we should know that some germs are helpful or advantageous to our bodies. In this instance, licking our fingers after eating can increase our sensitivity to bacteria and cause us to excrete more RNase, both of which can lower the activity of harmful bacteria and promote the growth of beneficial bacteria.

Improve Your Digestion.

Most people believe that licking your fingers after eating is disgusting and increases your risk of exposure to bacteria. But did you realize that occasionally using our fingers can be riskier than using eating utensils? Well, dirty dining utensils quickly spread bacteria that can affect our digestion. However, licking our fingers after eating helps strengthen our tolerance to microorganisms in the digestive tract.

Increase the Appetite

Our hands’ nerve systems are directly linked to our brains. Therefore, eating with just our fingers and licking them afterward allows our hands to quickly sense the feel and temperature of the food we eat. In this method, the nervous system can rapidly prepare the brain to receive food. Our hunger may also be increased as a result of this action.

Increase the Pleasure of Eating.

You know that the phrase “finger licking good” can refer to an incredibly excellent dish. This leads us to the conclusion that one way we can enjoy our food is by licking our fingers afterward. It may also serve as a symbol of our appreciation for the food we have.

Is It Unhealthy To Lick Your Fingers?

Since it depends on hygienic practices, there is no right or wrong response to this question. However, some people might consider licking your fingers unclean due to the possibility of transferring bacteria and germs from your fingers to your lips.

Numerous germs we pick up from our encounters are carried on human skin. For example, bringing your hand to your lips after touching a contaminated surface is a surefire way to get sick, and doing the same when you touch someone else is a known way to spread diseases.

However, licking your hands shouldn’t be a problem if they are clean and you haven’t been touching anything filthy.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that this also applies to licking dirty fingers, typically while engaging in negligent activities like turning the page of a book.

To lower the possibility of unintentional contamination, proponents of hand-eating techniques are typically fairly stringent about washing their hands before each meal.

Despite this, bacteria that hide in hard-to-reach places, like beneath the nails, pose a severe hazard to health since they can accidentally come into contact with other individuals and transfer their germs in saliva.

Although technically, finger-licking might be harmless if one practices excellent hand hygiene, the likelihood that it would be done unintentionally due to habit makes it an unhygienic action.

Conclusion

Many people think it’s unpleasant to lick your fingers after eating. It is regarded as unclean conduct that might spread illnesses and bacteria.

Don’t be concerned if you want to lick your fingers after eating but are conscious that you are in a public area. You are free to do whatever you want, but avoid making a scene or drawing attention to yourself. It would be great if you considered the possibility that some people could find this behavior offensive.

But if the food is genuinely finger-licking excellent and you can’t help yourself, go ahead and lick away – hopefully after washing your hands!