ots more intervention is needed to change behavior. For one thing, we're all used to routine, and many of us will just keep shopping where we've been shopping, even if a newer, more convenient and bountiful store moves in.

In inner cities and poor rural areas across the country, public health advocates have been working hard to turn around food deserts — neighborhoods where fresh produce is scarce, and greasy fast food abounds. In many cases, they're converting dingy, cramped corner markets into lighter, brighter venues that offer fresh fruits and vegetables. In some cases, they're building brand new stores.

nvestors will no doubt be eager to find out what went wrong. For the rest of us, a more pressing question is why anyone ever thought it could go right. Why did so many people buy into the dream that cultivated meat would save us?

And today, a few products that include cultivated cells have been approved for sale in Singapore, the United States and Israel.

So how manypeople are you cooking for tonight?” thecashier asked to defuse her agony as a long line of impatient people behind her glared.“Oh, just one,” she responded, and her Solitude Food instantly turned into LonelyFood.

a show I’ve seen a hundred times. Just me, meltedcheese, and the anksgiving episode of Gilmore Girls. at’s divine solitude.Read: Why do we look down on lonely people?But as we’ve all experienced, Solitude Food can become a Lonely Food—and that’swhen it turns sad. Solitude is slippery and can morph into loneliness with anaccidental listen to a particularly evocative song on shuffle, or when the place you’vechosen to eat isn’t as charming as you anticipated, or when something goes awry inyour pursuit of Solitude Food and it goes from an indulgence to a burdensome ritual.I’m thinking of a fellow barista at thecoffee shop where I used to work, an8/24/24, 4:02 PM What You Learn From Eating Alone - The Atlantichttps://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/11/eating-food-alone-lonely-solitude/672222/ 4/9

When a date got up and left in the middle ofour dinner, throwing down insufficient cash with an insufficient “I’m not feeling this—take care,” my plate of pasta was extremely sad; it became only sadder when thewaitress asked me if I wanted it packaged up to go. I did

This made us all feel good, especially me, for I couldn’t remember the last time she had felt any hunger or had eaten something I cooked. We began to eat. My mother picked up a piece of salmon toast and took a tiny corner in her mouth. She rolled it around for a moment and then pushed it out with the tip of her tongue, letting it fall back onto her plate. She swallowed hard, as if to quell a gag, then glanced up to see if we had noticed. Of course we all had. She attempted a bean cake, some cheese, and then a slice of fruit, but nothing was any use.

My mother would gently set herself down in her customary chair near the stove. I sat across from her, my father and sister to my left and right, and crammed in the center was all the food I had made—a spicy codfish stew, say, or a casserole of gingery beef, dishes that in my youth she had prepared for us a hundred times.

Which is to say, in order to write a personal essay that reaches your readers, that persuades your readers, you must write something that resonates beyond itself. Your dog is all dogs, all loss. Your story is part of a universe.

We experience a tragedy on two levels: the first is the one that feels, that grieves, that aches in every room where he isn’t; that plans the ceremony for the children, that speaks to the vet on the phone about the bill for the dead dog. The second level is the writer who is gathering evidence, who understands this story will grow more stark with time—who knows it’s too painful to write about yet but will nonetheless hold onto it in fragments, for down the road it will become part of the experience of sensemaking.

“Another time,” I fired back, exhausted from the long day of fasting. Another time never came, and never will.

But Um Hani happily came to the rescue, sharing her comfort-food recipes over the phone.

“someone had to … chop and burn the wood for cooking, dig the pit, butcher, process, cook and season the animals, serve the food, entertain the guests and clean up afterward” — and after Emancipation, white diners sought out Black pit masters and cooks, although their talent was often subsumed into white-fronted businesses.

The diners were eating out of a peculiar calculus of desire that had little to do with what the ingredients on their plates actually tasted like or how much nourishment they offered.