Mealtime Moments or is it? Less than half of families eat together

New research reveals that under half (43%) of families sit down and eat together and a third of people eat their daily meals on the sofa! The YouGov research by Readly digital magazine and newspaper app found that dinner is the top meal to spend time together (85%), with breakfast and lunch more grab and go style as it is being shared by just 7 percent of respondents.

On average, most people (37%) spend 20-29 minutes eating together, however almost one in ten (8 percent) spend 45 minutes to 1 hour eating together and 29 percent spend less than 20 minutes.

As a nation of foodies, almost two thirds (69%) said they enjoy cooking and over half (51%) consider themselves to be Head Chef in the household. Whilst gender equality is believed to be in place when it comes to cooking, 61 percent of women said they hold responsibility for cooking the meals in comparison to 39 percent of men. A third (27%) said it is a shared responsibility with their partner.

Chris Crouchman, Head of Content at Readly, said, “With busy lives, office days, working from home patterns and extracurricular activities and clubs, there is limited time to sit down together as a family but it's great to see that dinner time is a moment people are able to connect about their day and topics affecting their lives. It’s interesting to see that hobbies and interests, the news and work are the top discussion themes however travel and problems also feature highly. Apps like Readly are a great source of inspiration for mealtime conversation with all the latest news and magazine categories, there’s endless topics to fuel good chat”.

Those who sit down and eat together do so because they believe it is a good way to spend quality time together (39%),  a good chance to talk about the day or any issues that need resolving (19%) and it gives the family a good structure (14%), shows the research of over 2,000 people by the magazine app.

The topics most discussed at mealtimes are:

1 Hobbies and interests - 50%
2. News - 47%
3. Work - 45%
4. Friends and family - 44%
5. Holiday plans - 38%
6. Problems & issues - 36%
7. Politics - 28%
8. School or study - 25%
9. Finance and money - 24%
10. Sport - 18%

Readly is a digital magazine and newspaper app offering subscribers access to over 8,000 titles as part of its monthly subscription. It has a huge breadth of food and cooking titles available plus plenty of lifestyle and special interest titles to inspire mealtime topics and fuel conversation. Visit www.readly.com for more information.

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For media enquiries:

For more details contact: kate.tegelaars@readly.com or 07879 818 711

Research: The survey was carried out with a sample of 2004 adults across the UK, during the period from 23-29th April of 2024 via the Internet, on the basis of the YouGov Panel.

About Readly
Readly is the European category leader for digital magazines. The company offers a digital subscription service that gives customers unlimited access to 7,700 magazines and newspapers. Readly has subscribers in more than 50 countries and content available in 17 different languages. In collaboration with 1200 publishers worldwide, Readly is digitising the magazine and newspaper industry. In 2023, revenues amounted to SEK 677 million. The Readly share is listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market. For more information, please visit https://corporate.readly.com