When did dipping bread become uncool?

I’m 43 years old, and when I was young, everyone I knew was served bread with every meal, and it was always used to either dip or to wipe up remaining sauces. For breakfast, I was often given a couple of slices of lightly-buttered toast, cut diagonally, with some maple of corn syrup for dipping. No one would ever dream of eating a fried egg without toast to sop up the yolk.

Today, almost no one I know uses bread this way, it’s almost never served with meals, and if I sop up my yolks in a restaurant, people grimace and sneer like I just picked my nose and wiped it under the table. Other cultures still do it: Ethiopians use injera as both plate and eating implement, ripping off the edges and working their way in, scooping up food with the injera; Mexicans serve tortillas with every meal; there’s almost no Lebanese dish which can’t be rolled in a pita and eaten on the run. When did bread as eating implement become so declasse in our culture?

My suspicion is that it’s linked to the rising class prejudice in our society. As more and more become poor, poverty is coming to be seen as a moral failure, excusing the shrinking few with means from doing anything about it. Since using bread as an eating implement is seen as working class, the associated class hate goes along with it.