More happiness, strengthening relationships and well-being: advantages of eating in company

Eating as a family, sharing a dinner with a friend, attending a meal with a group are moments that many love, but in addition to filling us with happiness, a study from the University of Oxford shows that it brings health benefits.

Group eating and banquets have been the subject of studies for several decades, and recently, in the United Kingdom, the University of Oxford evaluated a nationally stratified survey “to test the hypothesis that eating with other people provides both social and “individuals.”

“Eating in company plays an important role in facilitating social bonds, and communal eating may even have been a mechanism favored by evolution,” explains Professor Robin Dunbar, from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. .

Food as an integrating element

Among the advantages it brings for mental health, they highlight that people who eat in company and socially frequently “feel happier and more satisfied with life, they trust others more.”

Additionally, they are more engaged in their local communities and have more friends they can rely on for support.

There is a close relationship between people who share dinner, according to the data provided by the respondents, who stated that they feel “closer to those with whom they eat, it involves more people, more laughter and memories.”

The scholar explains that the analysis of the trajectory reveals that the causal direction goes from eating together to bonding and not the other way around; So he argues that “social eating may have evolved as a mechanism to facilitate social bonds.”

Benefits of eating in company

He highlights that based on previous research, it has been shown that “social ties are important to combat physical and mental illnesses.”

“A significant proportion of respondents considered eating together to be an important way to create or reinforce these networks,” WeLife quotes.

Eating in company represents an opportunity to establish and strengthen ties on a personal level and with communities. “In these increasingly tense times, when community cohesion is increasingly important, making time for and participating in community meals is perhaps the most important thing we can do, both for our own health and well-being and for the of the community in general.”

Keep reading:

. Nutritional tips for eating away from home

. Reasons to avoid having a late dinner, according to a specialist

. Avoid compulsive eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet: nutritionist reveals how to control yourself

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