Make Your Day, and Share a Dinner

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Repurposed from the Longevity Project and Healthy to 100 Articles by Ken Stern from June 26th, 2025

Since 2005, Gallup has annually conducted its World Poll to measure the attitudes, beliefs, and well-being of people across the world. The poll covers 140+ countries, is conducted in more than 145 languages, and reaches more than 150,000 people. It’s a treasure trove of data on the human experience.

The poll often leads to important insights about human flourishing, and this year, the people at the World Happiness Report have studied the relationship between sharing meals and human happiness and sense of well-being.  And perhaps not so surprisingly in an era when we are increasingly aware of the importance of social connection, the researchers found a significant, positive relationship in almost all regions. Not only do countries where meal sharing is more common tend to report higher levels of wellbeing, but this is true even when comparing people who live in the same country. The statistically significant relationship between communal eating and well-being holds true even after holding constant for characteristics such as gender, age, income, and living alone.

American Lifestyle

There is good news and bad news for Americans. The good news is that eating together brings immediate benefits. Americans who eat at least one meal with others report higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress, pain, and sadness on that day. But the number of people who eat with others here in the US is in rapid decline. In 2023, roughly 25% of Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day – an increase of more than 50% since 2003. Dining alone has become more prevalent for every age group, but especially for young people. Today, 18 to 24-year-olds in the US are 90% more likely to eat every meal alone on a given day than they were in 2003.

Americans live increasingly isolated and disconnected lives. Check out the drive through traffic jams at Chik-Fil-A or the number of people in public spaces with their heads down on their phones.

Things to Do

It’s undoubtedly lonely, but not inevitable: if you’re looking for new pathways to personal happiness, push aside that TV dinner and belly up to the table next to someone you love, or like, or even just tolerate. It all builds social connection and supports human happiness.

Hear more from Ken about the importance of social connection on happiness and longevity at the Sun Health LiveWell Conference, November 13th & 14th in Glendale!

This article first appeared in Ken’s newsletter. You can subscribe here.

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