Eating aid

#The invention relates to an eating aid for more comfortably gripping fast food and finger food, such as hamburgers, in particular, according to the preamble of claim 1. To achieve this, the eating aid has a contact area for placing against the surface of a food item as well as a finger receiver facing away from the contact area for attachment to an individual finger or thumb. This enables gripping the food item without the concerned finger or thumb coming into direct contact with the surface of the food item.

#DE102013009978A1 describes a finger pulp protector for eating fast food. It consists of several thimbles made of a thermally insulating, liquid-repellent and grease-repellent material. This enables a user to hold even hot finger food without any pain, with the thimbles also preventing the concerned fingers becoming dirty.

#A disadvantage of such known eating aids is that they only enable insufficient gripping of food items with stuffing or fillings, such as hamburgers, hot dogs or sandwiches, in particular, having an outer bun or outer slices of bread with one or more layers of meat, cheese and/or vegetables or lettuce leaves received therein. In doing so, as with a lack of use of eating aids when holding and eating such food items, the layers of fillings frequently shift and partially or wholly escape from the bun or bread and cause contamination.

#An exemplary embodiment of the invention is depicted in the figures. In the drawings:

#FIG. 1 is a perspective view of an arrangement of eating aids worn on a hand when holding a food item,

#FIG. 2 is a perspective view of one of the eating aids of FIG. 1 towards a contact area,

#FIG. 1 shows a hand H of a user with an arrangement of several separate eating aids 2 slipped onto its finger F and thumb D which serve to better hold a food item E exemplified as a hamburger. For this purpose, each eating aid 2 has a planar element 4 forming a bottom-side contact area 6 which can be placed against a surface of the food item E. A spike 8 protrudes from each contact area 6 serving to penetrate the various layers of the food item E, which consists, for example, of a bun, a meat patty, a cheese layer and/or a lettuce or vegetable layer, and thereby fix the various layers in relation to one another.

#On a top side 12 facing away from the contact area 6 and the spike 8, the eating aids 2 each have a finger receiver 10, enabling the eating aids 2 to be slipped onto the respective individual finger F or thumb D. As can be seen from FIGS. 2 to 4, the finger receivers 10 are essentially bounded or formed by a ring element 14. Herein, each one of them is attached to or extends away from the planar element 4 such that a circumferentially closed receiver opening 16 is formed which can be pulled onto the concerned finger F or thumb D.

#The finger receiver 10 is also bounded by the top side 12 of the planar element 4. As depicted, a concave area 18 may be recessed into it in order to enable more comfortable placing or more stable positioning of the finger F or thumb D.