Eating With Others Is Critical to Your Happiness, According to Science

It turns out that happiness can indeed be found over dinner. So long as you’re sharing that meal with someone you care about.

In March, the World Happiness Report, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, revealed its 2025 findings, listing the happiest countries — with Finland taking the top spot — and examining what makes people happiest today.The report was created by combining “wellbeing data from over 140 countries with high-quality analysis by world-leading researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines.” Its aim, as always, is to give “everyone the knowledge to create more happiness for themselves and others.” And turns out that sharing a meal is one way to be instantly happier. 

“There are many ways in which we care and share with each other. Perhaps the most universal example is sharing meals,” the team stated in the study’s executive summary about its chapter dedicated to the importance of sharing meals. It added, as its findings show, “dining alone is not good for your well-being. People who eat frequently with others are a lot happier, and this effect holds even [when] taking into account household size.” 

In the dining chapter, the authors of the Happiness Report explain that there are very real consequences to consistently eating all your meals alone. It cites one particular meta-analysis that demonstrated the negative health consequences of loneliness and isolation were “roughly equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” The authors add that the number of people dining alone in the U.S. is increasing, and it’s one of the key drivers of the decline in well-being in the nation.

Conversely, the report referenced a study indicating that children who shared more meals with family exhibited improved dietary habits, lower obesity rates, fewer eating disorders, and enhanced academic performance. Additionally, another experiment revealed “strong links between meal sharing and positive affect,” but it importantly noted that this positive effect “diminished with increased smartphone use during meal times.” Lastly, yet another study found that adults who shared meals showed lower rates of depression, proving we can all benefit from breaking bread.

While simply sitting together is a great first step, Dr. Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University, where she teaches the Science of Well-Being course, says there are a few easy ways to up the happiness ante. 

“I think the key is to bring more humor and fun conversation back,” Santos shared with Food & Wine. “I recommend thinking about doing some goofy games. Something like two truths and a lie. Or would-you-rather. It sounds silly, but it can create more fun and social connection during another otherwise ordinary meal.”

It’s not just Americans who could benefit from this advice. According to the report, this positive link between dining together and happiness is observed across cultures, including in Finland, where the report stated that the average person shared about 10 meals with “someone you know” over the last week. It added that “sharing one more meal per week is associated with an average increase of roughly 0.2 points on a scale from 0 to 10. This difference is both statistically significant and practically meaningful. A difference of 0.2 points is roughly equivalent to a difference of five places in the global happiness rankings.”

However, that’s not to say that no happiness can be derived from dining alone every now and then.

“I think the key there would be to find ways to be mindful and savor your meal,” Santos added. “In fact, the report found that having at least one meal alone is better than having all your meals together. So there’s balance there. The problem is that more of us are eating alone too often, so for most people, a few more shared meals could lead to a big bump in well-being.”