Recently, we stumbled across an interesting paradox. In most European cultures, eating meals in community with family and friends is highly valued and eating alone is even seen as cultural deterioration¹. However, simultaneously, one-third of Europeans report that they eat every single meal alone².

Meanwhile, there is an increasing discourse about a loneliness crisis in modern society with 1 out of 10 Europeans reporting feeling lonely in their life³, leading to significant negative mental and physical health effects⁴. Therefore, loneliness is not only a private issue it´s a public one.

Yet, when we speak about eating well, we rather tend to speak about nutritional facts, the amount of food we ingest or maybe about the sustainability of our foods but not about the value of eating in community.

There are many communities' initiatives that do sustainable agriculture, there are food banks distributing leftovers and there are even urban gardening initiatives. However, in this blogpost, we want to present you four novel initiatives that focus on the simple act of eating together. Using social practice theory, we'll explore why people are increasingly eating alone, how Social Eating Initiatives (SEI) are changing that, how they simultaneously benefit the environment, and what challenges they are facing.

¹ Jönsson, Håkan, Maxime Michaud, and Nicklas Neuman. 2021. "What Is Commensality? A Critical Discussion of an Expanding Research Field." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (12). doi:10.3390/ijerph18126235.

² Mintel. 2019. Europe's lonely diners: Nearly a third of European consumers eat every meal alone. 6 December. Accessed 15 December, 2024. https://www.mintel.com/press-centre/europes-lonely-diners-nearly-a-third-of-european-consumers-eat-every-meal-alone/.

³ Surkalim, Daniel L, Mengyun Luo, Robert Eres, Klaus Gebel, Joseph van Buskirk, Adrian Bauman, and Ding Ding. 2022. "The prevalence of loneliness across 113 countries: systematic review and meta-analysis." BMJ. doi:10.1136/bmj-2021-067068.

⁴ Sue E. Williams; Bonnie Braun. 2019. "Loneliness is a serious public-health problem." Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences. doi:10.14307/JFCS111.1.7.