Living Alone Is Awful For Your Diet

We all need passive-aggressive vegan roommates, science finds.

Living alone is great. You don’t have to compromise a cleaning schedule, you can get really loud during all that sex you’re totally having, and you can eat frozen pizza on the daily without the scorn of hypercritical roommates. Plus, you can cry a lot.


The upside of the sans-roommate life is also its downfall. Living alone significantly decreases any chance of maintaining a nutritious diet, new research finds.


Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia compiled 41 studies and found that people who lived didn’t eat as much fruit, vegetables, and fish as they needed and had lower overall food diversity than those who lived with roommates or a partner. Men who lived alone fared even worse than women who lived alone. The findings held up for people of various ages, socioeconomic statuses, and levels of education attainment.


So not even Ivy League grads are spared the lure of ready-made frozen pizza.


Dr. Katherine Hanna, who led the research along with Dr. Peter Collins, broke it down: “The research suggests living alone may represent a barrier to healthy eating that is related to the cultural and social roles of food and cooking. For example, a lack of motivation and enjoyment in cooking and/or eating alone often led to people preparing simple or ready-made meals lacking key nutrients.”


And as it turns out, that passive-aggressive vegan roommate serves a vital purpose: “The absence of support or encouragement to comply with healthy eating guidelines and difficulty in managing portion control were also factors influencing diet.” You’re your own worst enemy, pretty much.


However, the research neglected two critical factors: Pizza and chips are delicious, and vegetables are gross.

Photos by Future Publishing / Getty Images