Why Eating Together Matters More Than You Think

Why Sharing Meals Matters For Happiness
New data from the World Happiness Report 2025 suggests something simple but powerful: how often we share meals with other people is closely tied to how we feel about our lives. Using Gallup World Poll surveys from 2022 and 2023, researchers compared the number of meals people shared in the previous week with how they rated their overall life satisfaction, as well as their daily positive and negative emotions.

Across countries, the pattern is clear. In places where people share more meals, average life evaluations are higher. On the 0–10 Cantril ladder of life satisfaction, sharing just one additional meal per week is associated with an average 0.2-point increase – roughly the difference between jumping five places in the global happiness rankings.

The Biggest Boost Comes From Just One Shared Meal
When researchers zoom in from countries to individuals, the story gets even more striking. The largest jump in wellbeing isn’t between people who share many meals and those who share a few; it’s between people who eat all their meals alone and those who share just one.

People who ate every meal alone scored an average 4.9 on the life satisfaction scale. Those who shared just one meal scored 5.2 — a 0.3-point increase. In wellbeing research, that’s substantial, roughly half the impact of becoming unemployed. From there, life evaluations tend to rise as shared meals increase, peaking at 6.1 for those who shared 13 meals per week.

Men, Women, Young, Old: The Pattern Holds
The link between sharing meals and feeling better shows up across gender and age. For both men and women, more shared meals correlate with higher life evaluations and more frequent positive emotions. The relationship with positive affect is especially strong, with a correlation of 0.44 between meal sharing and positive emotions — higher than the correlation with overall life satisfaction.

Where differences appear is in negative affect. Women generally report higher levels of negative emotions, and the reduction associated with shared meals is steeper for women than for men.

Age tells its own story. Older adults tend to report higher overall life satisfaction but lower daily positive affect. Yet sharing meals matters more for young people: when they eat with others, their life evaluations and positive emotions rise more sharply, even though both groups benefit.

A Rising Tide of Eating Alone
If shared meals support wellbeing, trends in the U.S. raise concern. The American Time Use Survey shows that from 2003 to 2023, the share of adults who ate all their meals alone rose by more than 50%. By 2023, one in four U.S. adults reported dining alone all day.

Living alone explains some, but far from all, of the shift. Dining alone has climbed sharply even among people who live with others. The steepest increases are among adults under 35, where rates of eating all meals alone have surged over 100% in the past two decades.

Beyond Income and Jobs
Researchers tested whether shared meals are just a proxy for advantages like higher income, better jobs, or larger households. But even after controlling for income, education, age, gender, employment, and household size, the connection between meal sharing and wellbeing remained strong and statistically significant.

In fact, when compared to income and unemployment — two long-recognized drivers of wellbeing — shared meals held their own. In many analyses, the number of meals people share explained more variation in happiness than their income level or employment status.

Why This Matters for Communities and Policy
The report does not definitively answer whether shared meals cause greater wellbeing or whether happier people simply seek out others more often. Both dynamics likely contribute. But the consistency and strength of the findings suggest that shared meals are an important and overlooked element of human wellbeing.

Shared meals may reduce loneliness, bolster social support, and create emotional connection — all powerful predictors of happiness. Because “How many meals did you share last week?” is a simple, objective measure, policymakers and community leaders can use it to track social connection and test solutions, from community dinners to meal-sharing programs.

In a time when loneliness is rising, especially among young adults, the data offers a hopeful reminder: adding one more chair at the table may matter more than any of us realize.