I believe the social implications are way more complex. While TFA compares cooking to sewing or gardening, in terms of a declining in both popularity and perso

I believe the social implications are way more complex. While TFA compares cooking to sewing or gardening, in terms of a declining in both popularity and personal imperative, beyond the arguable claim that food trumps both those, is the social component. Not so much that eating can be - let alone is necessarily - more social than pastimes such as gardening, but it's one of the few remaining opportunities to be social, both in the cooking and the partaking. Of course, the erosion of shared meal times and the likely impacts are already well studied. In his 1994 book 'The Doubter's Companion', John Ralston Saul observed: "Restaurants, until recently, were places of refuge for people excluded from the mainstream or seeking to escape it — poor students, aging unmarried men not rich enough to have themselves fed at home, richer men seeking sex not wives, and the proverbial artists leading their irresponsible lives. Over the last half-century, restaurants have risen in importance to fill the void left by the decline of the old public celebrations. They now provide the leading forums of public participation."