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 particu
lar 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.
