Eating meals alone is making us extremely unhappy, researchers say

Eating meals alone is one of the biggest causes of unhappiness, a study has found.

Researchers say those who always eat by themselves are less happy than those who dine with company.

The study by Sainsbury’s and Oxford Economics found that eating alone is more associated with unhappiness than any other factor other than having a mental illness.

It said those who eat alone scored 7.9 percentage points lower than those who do not on the national average happiness index.

Those with anxiety, depression, panic attacks or compulsive behaviour scored 8.5 points below the average, which was 60.7 out of 100.

Other factors that made people unhappy included limited physical mobility and having a learning disability.

The research was based on surveys of 8,250 UK adults.

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Social contact also plays a part in people’s happiness, the study found, with those who talk regularly to their neighbours reporting they were more content.

However, there was no association found between happiness or unhappiness and using technology such as texts or social media to communicate with others.

People who met their friends and family in person regularly were 1.4 points above the happiness average.

Eating with others made people 0.22 points happier on average, while sleeping well made people 0.93 points happier and having a satisfactory sex life resulted in a happiness index 0.44 points above the average mark.

Mike Coupe, Sainsbury’s group chief executive, said: “Nothing beats the power of simple human interaction.

“Spending more time with people face to face, rather than communicating via phones, can really help to improve how well we’re living.

“Instead of adding to our day-to-day pressures with numerous digital interactions, we should make time to get together, eat together and share together.”