The radical act of eating together
Half of London eats alone nearly every day
A bottle of wine comes out of the fridge and is uncorked with a pop. A big pot of ragú is gently bubbling on the stove, ready to be eaten whenever we are.
But we’re not ready yet. There is a glass of wine to be had first. Then a green course — dressed seasonal green vegetables that mark the beginning of most of our meals.
We scrape every morsel of ragú off our plates, but we’re in no rush. So we sobremesa — the Spanish ritual of remaining seated after a meal just to talk and digest. We chat about our day. About our life. Our future. The state of the world. What is on TV right now. Anything to extend the night and the feeling of connection around our tiny kitchen table.
This isn’t a special occasion, it's just a Thursday. It’s how we eat, my husband and I. It’s how we’ve structured most of our meals for the last 21 years.
It’s my favourite part of the day, this radical act of eating together.
The word radical may seem excessive for this situation, but if the dictionary definition is “very different from the usual,” then eating together is radical.
Only 26% of British families eat together despite 55% claiming to be happiest when they do. In the US, 46% of families say they find it difficult to find time to eat together regularly.
It’s not just families. Nearly a third of Brits regularly eat every meal alone. In London, that number rises to almost half.
Nearly half a capital city eats alone almost every night. Think about that.
The reasons for eating alone are many, and they are often reasonable. Differences in work schedules. Differences in food preferences and dietary requirements. The rise in single households. Kids engulfing more time and energy than any parent could have ever foreseen.
Some blame technology. iPads to keep the kids happy. Phones to keep solo diners company. Others reference mukbang — the phenomenon of watching other people eat alone online whilst they eat alone in real life. A concept started in South Korea which has spread across the world like cream cheese on warm toast.
Or maybe they don’t eat together because of the family itself. My own family meals growing up were stilted. Tense. Will my father like what my mother cooked, or will he criticise? Will this be a good dinner or bad? We eat quickly, my brother and I. Quietly too. We ask to be excused as quickly as possible.
If I had the choice, I would have eaten alone during those years.
One 2003 evening, I’m introduced to my then-boyfriend’s family. Their dinner is a sit-down affair. 30 minutes go by. Then 60. 90. And still, we sit. We talk, we drink wine — we sobremesa.
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The act of eating together feels like a bygone era, gone the way of American Dream-tinged white picket fences and women in dresses whose circumferences could tent a house. Eating with my boyfriend’s family certainly felt like 60 years ago when a family dinner would last on average 90 minutes.
Now, it’s just 12.
It feels politicised. The realm of Tradwives hellbent on, well, tradition. It feels like a “perfect” family ritual within families whose matriarchs vote for the rollback of women’s rights. The sort of family who refuses to understand that not everyone can — or wants to — cosplay a nuclear family on 1960s TV.
To criticise not eating together feels like a criticism of modern life with all its diversity and differences in living situations. How can we criticise the shiftworker parent who can’t sit down with their kid every night? Or the widow who would love to eat with her husband if only she could?
Yet still, the evidence suggests we should criticise. At least a little bit.
Because social eating is linked to higher levels of wellbeing:
Those who eat socially more often feel happier and are more satisfied with life, are more trusting of others, are more engaged with their local communities, and have more friends they can depend on for support.
It’s associated with health too. Eating alone is linked to lower food diversity and a lower intake of fruit and vegetables. A study of the eating habits of adolescents revealed that those who often ate alone were more likely to be overweight or obese. People who live alone are more likely to consume fast food or — the modern-day bogeyman of the culinary world — ultra-processed foods.
There are too many benefits to eating together to ignore. Benefits that we crave. We need in order to be better versions of ourselves. Happier versions.
To engage in the radical act of eating together, we need to get radical with the way we eat. My old boss, in his early-noughties way, would call it blue sky thinking.
I prefer to call it breaking the popsicle mould.
She unpacks a couple of Tupperware containers at the picnic table. It’s 6 pm and her one-year-old’s dinnertime. Not hers, though. She won’t eat before 8.30 pm, she tells me. It’s just the way she’s always done it. She will move heaven and earth for this child, but she refuses to change her eating habits. They are part of who she is.
But still, she wants to eat with her daughter. So one Tupperware is filled with dinner for the little one. The other is filled with something for us. Hummous. Chips. Olives. This being Berlin, we all grab some of beers from the späti and we eat together. A snack to keep us going before dinner later that night.
This two-step dinner is a compromise that keeps the family happy, she tells me. Breaking bread as a family, followed by breaking bread as a couple once the baby is in bed. No one eats alone yet everyone gets what they want and need.
Twelve of us pile into my one-bedroom apartment one sunny Sunday afternoon. I’ve borrowed chairs and tables for the occasion, which stretch across the length of the living room.
This being Portugal — and these guests being mainly Portuguese — we will eat the largest meal of the day whilst the sun is still high in the sky.
We stretch pizza dough into rough rectangles, big enough to fit my single sheet pan. We spoon on red sauce and tear up the best mozzarella I could find in a country that isn’t Italy. The toppings come next. Linguiça, Portugal’s spicy sausage. Grelos, a leafy green so prolific you could name it the national vegetable and no one would bat an eyelid.
The afternoon wears on in the way they tend to do in Portugal. Lazily.
At 5 pm, a friend leaves. He needs to open his wine bar that evening. At 7 pm, those with children leave for the kids’ dinner, bath and bedtime.
These people won’t eat communally again today — their lives are not conducive to social evening eating. But that doesn’t matter because they’ve already eaten together at lunchtime.
Just as it always has been in this corner of Europe.
Finding time and inclination to eat communally isn’t easy. It might feel impossible right now, your life being what it is.
That doesn’t mean it will always be this way. Lives shift. Children grow up. Jobs change. Relationships do too.
But food is a constant. We all have to find daily time to pause. To fuel our bodies. There is possibility within these slivers of time. The possibility to break bread — or break open the Taco Bell bag — with others. At least some of the time, at least one way or another.
The radical act of eating together doesn’t have to be so radical. Nor should it. Nothing that drives wellbeing or creativity — or speaks to what it means to be human — should ever be considered that way.
Not least one of the most human experiences of all.
I love eating Pho on my own. Or any broth, hungover, for that matter.
There is a certain magic to eating with someone. The simple act of sharing a meal creates familiarity, comfort, connection. Sharing food breaks down walls, crumbles barriers, and is generally considered the great leveler across generations, cultures and political views. Conversations start about the little things, and suddenly transform into something more, something deeper, and something truly personal. It doesn't matter if you are sitting at a Michelin Star restaurant or at a dinner table in the cozy comfort of someone's home, sharing something so profoundly simple as food can bring conversation, create understanding, and even make people with opposing views have a civil discussion about their perspectives. Sharing a meal is disarming. You are nourishing yourself and sharing that experience with someone else. Is it any wonder that strangers who sit down at a dinner table to break bread often find that they end the meal and the evening as acquaintances, or perhaps even friends.