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Go ahead and make dinner plans with some friends– a new study finds that eating alone is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness. Oxford Economics and the National Centre for Social Research surveyed more than 8,000 British adults to assess their well-being. They found eating alone is more strongly associated with unhappiness than any single factor other than having a mental illness. Those who ate by themselves scored 7.9 points lower than the national well-being average, compared to someone who always eats in company. Meanwhile, eating with others had one of the highest positive associations with well-being, with a score 0.22 points higher. A researcher explains, “The quality of our relationships and spending time together physically, not digitally, can go a long way towards improving how well we’re living: nothing beats the power of simple human interaction.”
