germophobic or just good manners?

The other day Terry spotted a woman in his office dining hall eating a banana with a spoon. It was sitting on her plate length-wise, with only the top strip of peel removed. (His iphone camera failed him, so sadly, no photo.) When he told me about it I thought, Only in Japan would you see such a thing, but when I mentioned it to my friend Katherine, she said that when her sister was in college, she spent the summer boarding in a convent in Rome, with very proper young Italian ladies. They never touched any food item with their hands, including bananas and oranges both peeled and eaten with knife and fork. So I guess it's not just a Japanese thing.