Why do people eat meals together?

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I just like eating Throw me a cheeseburger, and I don't care who is or isn't around to watch me eat it.

Seriously though, I enjoy sharing meals with people I care about, as long as they have good table manners. My family never ate dinner together, but I want my children to grow up with family dinners. It seems old-fashioned nowadays, but I think it's a nice tradition.

I prefer eating alone, so that I can relax. I recently went out to dinner with a group of people, and at the end of the meal, only myself and one other in the group ordered dessert. So the other people sat and stared at us while we ate it. I abandoned it half way through. It was just too nerve wracking.

i enjoy eating other people , you rarley get the chance in our busy day lifestyles so t is nice to sit with family now and then!!.

I consider the question "got enough salt?" to be grounds for justifiable homicide.

Just saying...

I prefer to eat alone. I feel uncomfortable eating infront of others, apparently i've been like that my whole life according to my mother.

Every sunday evening my family gets together and has a meal. Thats really the only time we eat as a family, I hardly go there anyway, probably only once every three weeks.
My family treat that as a social situation...I think of it as severely annoying.

i feel awkward when i sit alone and need to be socializing while i'm eating. it doesn't help me eat my lunch at school and i typically don't eat all of my lunch. i find that when when i sit alone at lunch or anywhere, i become depressed and over analyze things in my mind.

i like reading and eating. On my own.
i have almost unstoppable tendency to criticise how my sons papa eats ( a noisy mess) , which he just about puts up with cos NT/easygoing, but i prefer it when he's not there.
My son and i are about ok as social eating unit. My son is AS/PDD of some kind. We have food tasting sessions where discuss tastes of things. And he gives my cooking marks out of ten etc, with the reasons why, which i am usually in agreement with, tho not always!! . We understand the other's reasons for eating; hunger and/or interest/pleasure.
But the NT father far too often eats/wants to eat/asks about "what there is to eat" BECAUSE it is "lunchtime", or "suppertime", etc, which drives me nuts.

Some people i can eat unselfconsciously with, but not many.

To answer thread question; why i eat with others, is because more or less have to most of time as mother, tho keep it to minimum. And occasionally, VERY occ, is because am invited to eat with people.

I don't mind eating with people who are quieter about eating (ie, have decent manners); dinner with my family is probably the most I actually physically speak the entire day, but that's only if my father isn't there. He eats so noisy and icky and without manners that I rush through dinner to try and get away from the table. I being near him when he eats. I don't mind eating with others if the food isn't loud; chips and snow peas and whatnot are very crunchy, and that makes me quite self conscious.

I don't mind eating alone either. I tend to read then, and there's not as many rules (I'm still mannerly (lack of such just annoys the heck out of me; it's just a personal/sensory thing), but I can watch the news or pet the dog or something at the same time), and there's no one to either annoy or be annoying.

It is very nice to share a meal with someone, as long as no stressful discussion arises. That always makes me choke, literally. I had a lot of those in the past. But when I have dinner with my daughter I try not to talk, because I know how unpleasant it was for me in the past to be "drilled" during meals. Also, don't you love when, at a restaurant, the waitress shows up out of nowhere and asks really fake and loud if everything is OK? Of course it was OK, untill she showed up. If I would need anything, I would be looking for her or what I need, so I find that habit of asking if everything is OK very annoying...