Jess Janz

Oh, no.

Thank you so much for having me.

Well, I kind of go both ways.

I mean, my gut initial reaction is like, oh my gosh, that sounds so sad.

And then I kind of talk it back being like, okay, well, I eat alone a lot or if I'm traveling or like, you know, maybe they just caught a bunch of people on their way back from somewhere.

Like it's just a Tuesday night out and you're out of groceries.

Like they're, in and of itself, eating alone is not problematic.

But the fact that it's spiking so significantly is probably telling us something.

And I think part of that has to do with and when we think about like so much conversation around loneliness, too, that like I think we're not ritualizing regular things like just going out for dinner when it's not this like big Instagrammable thing.

We're not like getting together with people on a regular basis as much as we used to.

So, yeah, that's my initial.

It's upsetting.

I don't know.

Oh, no.

Yeah, because I think about this a lot of like, we don't have spaces where it's okay to go alone.

Like that are social spaces where you do show up alone and then end up meeting people.

Like I feel like in England or like in the UK, they have like pub culture.

Like it's okay to just go, I'm going to run down to the pub and

see what happens and you kind of intermix and intermingle.

And in North America, we don't have that culture.