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Mealtime

I tried six ways to cut my kids' food. Only one of them stuck.

In 2022 with two kids, thousands of meals, and a drawer full of things that technically worked. Here's what actually made the job easier.

By Matt, founder of TotchopUpdated August 2026 · 6 min read

Parent Travel Set 2-Pack — The actual conditions: food getting cold, someone getting loud.

Guarantee badge — The actual conditions: food getting cold, someone getting loud.

Nobody tells you how many times you are going to cut up food for your kids. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, then do it again tomorrow.

While my wife was in medical school, I handled a lot of the food prep for our first couple of kids, and as an engineer, the inefficiency drove me nuts. I was constantly cutting, checking bite sizes, and cutting again.

At some point I pulled out an old wooden rocker knife we had been gifted years earlier and realized the rocking motion was much faster than anything else I had tried. It wasn't dishwasher safe, but I kept using it because it worked.

Then our daughter Joanie had a choking scare at the dinner table. She went unresponsive, my wife jumped into medical mode, I called 911, and thankfully she ended up okay after the Heimlich.

I kept wondering whether I had rushed her food prep that night.

That was the point when I decided to build a better rocker knife specifically for parents. Something that kept the speed but was designed for the way families would actually use it every day (baby on hip + easy cleanup).

Along the development, I periodically would try the old tools and immediately remembered why our prototype would be something special.

Here's how those tools stacked up.

1

The chef's knife

Didn't stick

Obviously, a chef's knife can cut up a pancake. The problem is how much your hand has to do when you're making a lot of small pieces.

Lift, position, slice, reposition, then do it again. It works great when I'm actually cooking, but it feels like overkill when I'm just trying to turn dinner into twenty smaller bites while somebody is waiting to eat.

A straight knife was built to do a lot of things well. This particular job just wasn't one of its strengths.

The Totchop Sharp Knife & Board Set

Rocker knife, fitted board, and the removable Chop 'n Pop silicone insert. All three dishwasher safe. Adult prep tool, not a kids' knife.

$54.99~~$69.99~~Save $15

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Free US shipping over $50

2

Kitchen shears

Didn't stick

We used kitchen shears for quite a while, and for certain foods they're genuinely useful. Pizza, quesadillas, noodles, anything you can easily hold or position.

The limitation is that you're usually managing the food with one hand while working the scissors with the other. Fingers squeezing a hot meatball in between two blades is not ideal.

And for some reason, when you have a velcro baby, you're always short one hand.

3

The pizza cutter

Didn't stick

This one seems like it should be the answer.

It's pretty fast, works with one hand, and gets rid of the sawing motion. On flat foods like toast, pizza, or a quesadilla, it can work really well.

Then you try chicken, a strawberry, or anything thick enough that a wheel doesn't want to roll through it. It's limited.

4

Whatever is available at the table

Definitely didn't stick

Restaurants, grandparents' houses, the food truck fork. Eventually every parent ends up trying to cut food by pulling it apart with their fingers.

It works about as well as you'd expect.

Meals out were actually one of the places where I noticed the problem most. At home I could grab another knife or cutting board. Away from home, I was stuck with whatever happened to be on the table.

It made me realize that portability mattered too.

5

Buying food already cut up

Didn't stick

Pre-cut meals, pouches, individual trays (wasteful). Technically, this is one way to eliminate the job altogether.

But it doesn't help much when your kid is eating the same chicken, pancakes, fruit, or pasta everyone else is eating.

Eventually you are back to cutting food.

The one that stayed

6

A rocker knife and a fitted board

Still on the counter

The biggest difference is the motion.

Remember the big paper cutter at school?

You didn't have to guide the blade through the paper freehand. The motion was already built into the tool. You chose where you wanted the cut, brought the blade down, and the shape helped guide the movement.

That's the idea behind a rocker knife.

With a traditional knife, your hand creates the cutting motion each time. With a rocker, you just have to push/rock it downward. It's incredibly intuitive.

You choose where to cut. The shape helps guide the motion.

That's where so much of the control comes from. Instead of lifting and resetting the knife for every little piece, you can move through the food with a short rocking motion.

And when we paired that blade with a fitted board designed to help contain the food, the whole process became simpler. Cut, collect, plate.

That's ultimately what we built Totchop around.

Not a new way to cook. Just a better tool for one small job parents do thousands of times.

Parent Knife — The curved blade creates the rocking motion.

Totchop Parent set showing sharp knife, board, and silicone cutting insert. — Rocker knife, fitted board and microplastic-free insert. All dishwasher safe.

How the six compare on the job
	Knife	Shears	Pizza cutter	Rocker + board
Easy one-handed prep	Limited	Limited	Limited	Yes
Control over small cuts	Good	Varies	Varies	High
Helps contain food	No	No	No	Yes
Handles thicker foods	Yes	Some	No	Yes
Easy to bring along	No	Yes	No	Yes

The Totchop Sharp Knife & Board Set

Rocker knife, fitted board, and microplastic-free Chop 'n Pop silicone insert. All three are dishwasher safe. Adult prep tool, not a kids' knife.

$54.99~~$69.99~~Save $15

See the Sharp Set

Lifetime guarantee
60-day returns
Free US shipping over $50

Four thousand plates is a lot of plates.

Looking back, there was nothing wrong with the other tools. They were just built for different jobs.

A chef's knife is designed to be incredibly versatile. Shears are great for foods you can pick up and cut. A pizza cutter is very good at cutting pizza.

We were borrowing all of them for this small, repetitive job parents do over and over again.

The wooden rocker showed me that the motion itself was better for what I was trying to do. Joanie's choking scare gave me a reason to stop accepting the parts that weren't.

So I started working on a version built around parents.

That's how Totchop started.

And after all those plates, it's still the knife sitting on our counter.

Shop the Sharp Set

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