It’s strange how something as ordinary as a meal can become a kind of endangered ritual. In Italy, the idea of sitting down to eat together still holds a certain weight — an act that, in many households, borders on sacred. But across much of the modern world, mealtimes are becoming solitary, transactional, easily sacrificed to the gods of efficiency and screen time. So when the University of Minnesota, with the backing of the Barilla Group, published The Power of Togetherness this March — a study that links shared meals to improved mood, fewer depressive symptoms, and greater feelings of connection — it wasn’t exactly shocking. What was surprising, perhaps, is how much we needed a study to remind us.
Researchers surveyed 1,000 adults in each of three countries: Italy, the U.S., and Germany. The results painted a clear picture. The more frequently people ate together, the better they felt. Italians topped the charts: 74% of adults eat with others at least six times a week. In the U.S., one in ten said they never share a meal at all.
It’s tempting to reduce this to a statistic about mental health — more dinners, fewer blues — but the real story might be less clinical. It might be the conversation, because when people sit down to eat, they tend to talk. About food, yes. But also about work, politics, the news, the neighbor’s haircut, the tomatoes this season. In Italy and Germany, current events dominate. In America, the food itself becomes the topic. And always, behind it all, there’s the quiet hum of being seen, of being heard. Of being, for a little while, the center of a shared, almost sacred ritual.
This is not just about well-being. It’s about culture. About resistance, even. Cooking for someone, eating together, clearing the table side by side — these are not acts of convenience. They are small, stubborn stands against a social order that prizes speed, output, and autonomy above all else. They say: here, now, we gather.
Italy, with its Sunday lunches and multi-generational tables, may seem like an outlier — a romantic holdout. But that picture, too, is shifting. Urban rents are soaring. Schedules are fractured. Time, increasingly, is a luxury. “Time to eat” has come to sound like a holiday. Like something you might post about, if only you had time. And yet, the research tells us what we already know. We’ve just stopped listening. Cooking a meal with someone, arguing over politics at the table, learning patience over the last shared slice of bread — these are not trivial habits. They are how we learn to live with each other. How we learn to live, full stop.
