The rise of eating alone

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Thanks to Melanie in Salford in Northwest England, who emailed the food chain at bbc.co.uk. I listened to the programme regularly and you did say on the programme if you've got something that you think we could look into the email in. You're alone for long periods. Sometimes you just don't want to sit at home looking at the four walls. You know, you want to get out and eat something a bit different. Oh, you don't really want to cook. You know, so you think, okay, I'm going to go out and I do it. And it has various issues. When I started to think over that and I then had a list then, there's this, there's this. So it's really kind of growing to quite a long list of, you know, different things that impact you if you have to eat alone for whatever reasons. What's top of the list? I think walking into somewhere at a restaurant or cafe, sitting down on your own and just waiting for someone to come over and they come and look at you and think they're looking at the empty chair. They don't usually say anything and then say, okay, and then sort of they're probably not. But I think, oh, they're walking away thinking, why is she on her own? Yeah, well, how come she's not got anybody with her? And it's a bit uncomfortable, but I just have to push through that. So that's kind of the hardest step to do I decide to go and sit down on my own somewhere and when I order food. And sometimes in an English pub say, you have to find a table, get the table number and then go to the bar to order. Well, that's very difficult if you're alone. You know, what do you do if you leave your bag behind? No, of course not. Sometimes I leave a jacket on the chair and then come back and someone sat on my table. And, you know, so that's the hardest part, I think, just sitting down. I have to say, my sort of personal limit is, I tend to prefer to be outside if I'm eating alone on it on a like a beer garden or a terrace or something like that. Going inside feels like a very different thing to me. It's walk inside somewhere along which we feel very intimidating. Why do you think that is? I don't know, you've got to cross that threshold and go inside, haven't you? And there was one occasion then not long after Covid. And it was everybody's outdoors and I sat down at a table and it was a table for four. It was just many refuse to serve me. He said, you can't sit there on your own. We've got to keep the table for a big group of people. And he sent me away, so that was quite hurtful. But sometimes I'll go and sit down and be, okay, I can do this. You know, it's fine, nothing wrong with it. And sometimes I think, no, I just don't want to do that today. And I'll just go home and eat. So, you know, it just depends on the mood I'm in and, you know, what I'm just what I'm feeling like in that moment. What do you think people are thinking when they see you sitting at a table on your own? Honestly, I think they're probably looking at me thinking, oh, what's the matter with her? Why don't you get any friends? What's wrong with you that you're on your own? But, well, the likely they couldn't care less and don't even notice, really. Sometimes the waiters will give you a bit of a, you know, a side-long glance. And, but, you know, I just think, so what? You know, but, yeah, I know nobody's interested in me, but I just imagine it, you know. Melanie is far from alone, though. Globally, there are more single people than ever before. A fact researched by Eric Kleinenberg, a professor of sociology at New York University, and the author of a book called Going Solo, the extraordinary rise and surprising appeal of living alone. So, when I started the research project that became going solo, I was under the impression that living alone was an American phenomenon. I was stunned to learn that the United States is a laggard and not a leader when it comes to living alone. Living alone, it requires wealth. It requires social security. So, a good welfare state could make a big difference. You know, if you know that you have access to healthcare or home care or good public transit or social infrastructure in your community that allows you to engage the world productively, you don't necessarily need to live with other people. You can live, however, it feels best. And so, I learned that living alone is significantly more common in Europe than it is in the United States, in Stockholm, in Helsinki, in Copenhagen, in Paris, in Berlin. It's roughly 40 to 50 percent of all households that are one person households. I was quite surprised to learn that living alone is actually more common in South Korea and Japan than it is in the United States. Tokyo is a haven for social life, great bars and restaurants, and in fact, I think that makes it easier for people to live by themselves. He says urbanization is one of the drivers of the trend. As more people move to cities, living alone has become increasingly common. In many places, people are also marrying later. Societies are generally more affluent. Women have greater financial and social independence, and longer life expectancy means more people spend years living on their own after the death of a partner. But still living alone poses certain kinds of challenges. And one of the fundamental challenges people face when they start to live alone is what am I supposed to do when I'm hungry? I grew up in a family having meals with other people, or in school where we all ate together in a cafeteria. Do I just sit by myself in the kitchen and, you know, wolf down, something I've stuck in the microwave? Do I cook elaborately for myself? That could feel like a strange thing. Do I go to a restaurant and eat by myself at a table? When you were researching the book, did people talk to you about that? Very much, because it's a practical consideration that enters their lives while at least three times a day. And what I learned is that eating alone for many people is a skill that's something we develop the capacity for, and that can involve trying to be more comfortable in our own skin. A skill that Darius in Washington in the US has perfected. She's one of the visitors to the BBC World Service Facebook page. She's been telling us about their experiences of eating alone. I have been single for a couple of years now. I was in a relationship for seven, eight years, and before that I was married for over 30. At first it was really hard. I felt really judged by other people in the restaurant. And well, why is she sitting there and without anybody? She must be just, uh, but now I sit back and I observe. And sometimes I'll bring a book at this point in my life. I just feel liberated from not having to worry about what other people think how I'm eating. Just enjoying the food, just watching people. Sometimes I miss having somebody with me, but most of the time I'm okay. I like my life. It is what it is, but I truly enjoy eating alone. Darius in Washington. I asked Melanie in Northwest England what goes through her mind when she sees someone else dining out on their own. I think, oh, good, I'm not the only one. You know, that's very much what I feel, and particularly it's a woman. I think there's still, in this day and age, a difference between men being alone and women being alone, particularly if it's a pub. You know, it's fine for men to just ride into a pub, walk up to the bar, get a drink, and chat to somebody who's standing at the bar. But even nowadays I don't think that's true for women. You probably wouldn't strike up a conversation with someone in a poppy-dovey field of what the consequences might be. I'm just thinking, like, what a place can do to make a solo dining, I feel welcome. I think perhaps more people doing it, and we'd be less surprised by somebody arriving on that own, and if more of us get out there and do it and do sit and eat on our own, and. You are making me feel like I want to go out and do this. Good, good. For you and for everybody else out there who's feeling self-conscious, that's like, that's all just, let's start a movement. What's the worst that could happen? It's unlikely to catch on everywhere, though. Good afternoon. My name is Malambashir Belok. I'm from Kakara. Parabasate, Nigeria. I personally find it in a lot, very lonely, and to some extent, like it is, this is because of how we were raised the African culture is a culture that pride is safe in people yeah 18 together and that communal aspect and this has actually formed powerful lifestyle living as adults because today I find it very difficult to eat alone and I try to stay hungry than to eat alone. I remember growing up whenever I come home and then I ask for my meal my mom will always tell me to go get any of my siblings and if I can't find any I should go call a friend or a cousin but I should never come to a kitchen alone asking for for me so that has actually played a very prominent role in how we eat even plus adults today. Malam Bashir Bello in Nigeria however even in societies where eating together remains a powerful tradition there are people challenging that norm. I went to a bar alone in Delhi and someone asked if I'd been stood up so now I'm testing places I can actually sit in the low today I'm at +91 for solo dinner since moving to Delhi Nishis Singh has built a following on social media videoing her solo dining experiences she's not single she's married and just enjoys time to herself something she was surprised to find was considered unusual. I've always gone out by myself to eat sometimes to have a beer that's always been quite normal in my experience you know growing up in London I never sort of saw that as a weird thing to do but once when I did that in Delhi someone approached me and said that they assumed that I'd been stood up so that really surprised me and it sparked a conversation about the culture around solo dining in Delhi and I was really shocked to hear that it's not really something people do so my first question was just why the inspiration for my opening line came to me and yeah a couple of days later I started the Instagram. And to Nishis surprise within just three months she had 40,000 followers I just thought that it would be a good way of learning a little bit more about Delhi I didn't expect for it to get as much traction as it did and why do you think people are so interested. I'm still trying to figure that out myself but I have a few theories I think you know if it was a man doing this a lot of people wouldn't think twice about it at all but because I'm a woman and I'm completely unapologetic about it and I don't really explain anything about that it can come across to quite a lot of people as empowering or somewhat inspirational. Quite a lot of people have reached out and said that this is something they'd like to do and they're too scared to do it themselves or this is something they've always done and they're glad that I've brought that to Delhi and made it more sort of normal when spoken about. I asked Nishis whether like Melanie in North West England she ever worries about safety she says not and she says older friends of her family approve too. Surprisingly a lot of my parents, friends specifically the aunties they found this extremely empowering they said our husbands have been doing this for years and I've always wanted to but I've never had the opportunity and you know that might be because someone's asking you why you have to spend that amount of money unnecessarily or don't you have other things you should be doing and there's an endless, endless list of tasks to do so I think previous generations women have felt that guilt for taking that time for themselves and so they're thrilled that I'm doing this and not apologising for it and it's so normalized now. So your social media, your strapline is British Indian and Delhi looking for places you can actually hang out in alone. Do you finally have to really pick and choose places you'll be comfortable in Dining Solo? Yeah I'd say so. India can be quite overwhelming and I'd say Delhi more so than some other cities I've been to. I find I get more stairs in some places, less stairs in some places. I do tend to stick to a certain type of place some would call it a more expensive type of place but yeah I would say I have to be quite selective. Do you feel that where you are in Delhi dining out alone wouldn't necessarily be for everyone then? I do think it's easier for some people than it is others I think because of the way I speak because of the way I present myself, restaurants staff don't have that same sort of suspicion as to am I going to spend enough for it to be worth while for me to come alone from a business perspective. Whereas I guess if you're a little bit more scruffy looking then they might look at you twice before letting you sit down alone. So I do think I have the benefit of privilege there. Nishi Singh of Table for One Delhi. You're listening to the food chain from the BBC World Service. Prep for a busy week with Whole Foods Market. Start your day with fully cooked breakfast sausages from Amy Lou. 365 brand frozen waffles with no bleached flowers and of course Whole Foods Market eggs which are all cage free or better. In the evening bring home a build your own family meal that feeds for for just 35 dollars. Choose one entry and two sides. Shop smarter not harder at Whole Foods Market. Thumbtack presents tile trouble. Every single time I use my sink I make eye contact with the uneven growl my kitchen backsplash. The crooked corners eye me and I'm haunted by more tiling questions than I thought possible. What kind of pro can fix a backsplash? Can I replace one crack tile or should I replace them all? What? But if I just use Thumbtack I can hire top rated pros read reviews and compare prices with a tap all on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. I'm Ruth Alexander this week eating alone. Hi I'm Lucine from Barcelona in Spain. I think eating alone is an act of self-love. To me it shows that you are comfortable with your own company. It takes confidence to take yourself to a nice restaurant and truly enjoy a good meal by yourself. We often say that cooking a nice meal for someone is a way of showing love and care and I think treating yourself to a good meal is the same. Sometimes I sit in a cafe or restaurant on my own and watching the world go by. Those moments don't feel lonely at all. They feel peaceful for me and I truly believe that when you love and respect yourself you're able to share that love with other people and with the world. That's really important for me. Hello my name is Gareth. I've lived in Finland for the last 24 years. Eating alone for me started I think back when I was in Sixhorn College in South Wales. It started I think as a quiet act of rebellion against my family's thing at the time about you know we all had to sit down and eat dinner at the same time and as we got older I just found it was nicer to sit down and eat my main meal of the day quietly in the evening and I mean like sort of 10/11 o'clock in the evening midnight now that I am myself married with children we have dinner roughly around the same sort of time frame every evening but I'm always like okay everybody's in bed in the sleep then I'll sit down and have something to eat and it's got to the stage now where I just feel I enjoy my food regardless of the setting and regardless of the time but food means more to me now when I sit down and eat it by myself. Gareth in Finland and Lucine in Spain cooking for one has its challenges though recipes are often written with families in mind groceries tend to be sold in quantities aimed at households not individuals and it can be harder to find the motivation when it's just you all of which is why Joni Zisk in the US state of Florida found she had a surprise hit on her hands when she posted recipes for her son on her blog when he went away to college the food he says wasn't great so he wasn't eating well and so I said well I'll just kind of take our our family favorite recipes and scale them down and put them on you know my website and you can grab them and use them and enjoy them and so I did that and he did enjoy them and so to Joni surprise did many other people so we had young professionals people who maybe had never cooked for just themselves to older people who who cooked for a family and then found themselves now just cooking for their empty nesters so cooking for just two or maybe just themselves they really responded to those recipes as well. Joni and her husband saw they had a hit on their hands and created one dish kitchen a website dedicated to single-serve and small batch recipes Joni believes solo cooks often have to work that bit harder in the kitchen and she hopes her recipes make life a little easier. I think the the waste issue was such a big issue you know and so we've given people tools on our on our site that actually they can type in if they have a half of a red pepper or a half of an onion and it'll spit out recipes that they can actually make with that and I think that it starts with you know finding the right recipe and then finding the right-sized dish and sometimes you just need a place to start on which are the most popular recipes on the side. We have a lot of comfort foods that are very popular but really the basics as well just how to cook a chicken breast is single-tick and brass store, how to make a small loaf of bread or a small batch of chocolate chip cookies, those seem to be very popular. And you have a special section on your site, how to reduce a recipe. So what are some useful rules of thumb tricks that people can use to just take a recipe out of a book or online and make it into a recipe for them? I think the first thing is just to divide it in half first and that can generally work. Also understand, you know, how much is in a cup of flour, maybe break it down to so many tablespoons and then that makes it easier to divide, but then going beyond that. I think a lot of the recipes on our website are actually built from the ground up, because sometimes you can't have an egg, you know, you have to use either the egg yolk or the egg white, so we've determined which part of that egg would go best in each recipe. You're not single yourself, are you? No, I'm not. What do you get out of this then? Well, you know, my husband traveled a lot when he worked in the corporate world, and so I did spend a lot of evenings at home, but, you know, I really love the challenge of scaling down a recipe and I enjoy knowing that we're really helping people through what we're doing. Yeah, we do get photographs all the time of people who show us their place setting, you know, and we've said, take the nice dishes out, use the nice plates, just make it special, you know, pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy a nice meal for yourself. Joni's isk, but for some eating a meal alone can feel like something's missing. A little while ago, Malvina Abbott, who's 83 and lives in San Diego, California, was listening to our program about how to have a stress-free family meal. And during the program, one of the participants cited a study about people who eat alone, specifically adults, who eat at least one meal a week with another adult, are far more happier than those who go. That thought stayed with her and sparked an idea. Living by herself as she does, why not make more of the fortnightly video chats? She enjoys with friends from her online exercise class. Good morning, everyone. So good to see you. I was thinking, why don't we eat with one another? Most of the time, we're just chatting, and once one of us might be eating, and I thought, why don't we all eat together? This would be wonderful. And I put that out to them and they thought it was a really good idea. So we did it. Is anybody else taking a bite yet? I've been on the long. Nothing keeping it back from a good meal. Can we have so much fun? That's Melvina, Glenda, Nancy, and Praba having breakfast together over a video call. The first time they tried eating together virtually, they had dinner. And it turned out to be one of the best things that I've ever done on Zoom, actually. One of the women in our group, out of all of us, was the most lonelyest because she had a very long marriage, and her husband had died maybe three or four years ago. And she was really in grief, and she just didn't know what to do with her. So she was so happy when we started doing that, and even happier when we decided to have a meal together. Well, it made me and the rest of the team so happy to know that our program had inspired this video call meal. That very first time, what did you eat? Nothing elaborate. It was dinner, and I do remember that we each had something different. Since Praba's a vegetarian, it was one of her magical vegetarian dishes that she makes. Those are vegetables, and I had salad. I was at nice that you were all bringing something different, and you didn't know in advance necessarily what people would be having. Oh, yes, that was great. We didn't want to make any rules. We didn't say you must eat this or that. You should wear this or that. Just a natural getting together as if we were sitting at the same table together. And that was an interesting thing that I observed is that I was actually sitting at a table. When we were doing this, whereas when I'm alone, much as I am now with the lap tap actually on my lap, sitting in front of the television, so it felt nice that you'd brought yourself to the table to have this meal with your friend. And a lot of things we do alone is so different from when we were at other people. And eating a meal turned out to be quite different from eating alone. And did it feel like you were around a table together? Oh, definitely. In fact, you know, we say what are you eating today? We started sharing some recipes during the course of the meal, which always fascinates me because I love to cook. It was such a natural flow, like we were in one of those kitchens together. And you say the topic of eating alone was discussed? Yes, extensively. What experiences did you share? Well, we all agree that when you have the opportunity to eat with someone else, that's a better situation. And especially with people now, my whole family is all over the country, all of the world for that matter. The likelihood of my sharing a meal with that in person is not very great. So this allows me to feel more included, happier. That study really clicked in the end and the happiness aspect of it. Do you think maybe you hadn't quite realized the impact eating alone had been having on you and your sense of well-being? Yes, that's very well said. I think that there is a need sometimes, and maybe we don't even know it until something changes. And now I know the difference. And when you hung up on that call, how did you feel? I was elated, absolutely elated. I realized, you know, this could be the start of something big, as the song goes. Maybe there's someone listening right now going, you know what? I am going to get in touch with my friends on the other side of the country and make a dinner date with them virtually. Oh, I highly recommend it. Malvina Abbott, thanks to her, and to everyone we've spoken to for today's program, not least Melanie, whose idea it was, and if you're tempted to try dining out alone as she does, here's her advice. I think you just have to be bold and from to out, you know, you have to say, okay, I'm doing it, and just don't think anyone's judging you, just go and take your seat, wait for someone, and don't be put off by, you know, funny looks from the waiters, or if they're looking around, you know, looking for somebody else, looking around you, where's your dining companion? Just, you know, not being in the face, but, you know, look up in the eye and say, yes, it's just me and just, I try and think, why shouldn't I do this? You know, it's perfectly fine. Why shouldn't I just sit here and eat on my own? So, yeah. Listen up, Melanie, in Salford. If there's something you'd like us to make an episode about, do please, as Melanie did, email the food chain at bbc.co.uk. From me and the rest of the team, producers Lexi O'Connor and Izzy Greenfield, and editor Sarah Whiteson, thanks for listening, and join us again next week. Whatcha doing boss? Checking our bluevine account. We just got paid for last week's job. Now I'm paying the crew for this week and setting money aside for materials next week. Just like that? Just like that. With bluevine's banking platform, manage invoices, bill payments, loans, and more from anywhere, so your business keeps moving. Bluevine Business Banking, easier done than said. Visit bluevine.com. Bluevine is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking service is provided by coastal community bank, a member of the IC, lines of credit issued by Celtic Bank Subject to approval. 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