Photo/Illutration A man serving rice in a bowl. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

When I worked in Australia where eating out is costly, I was surprised to see how a locally employed staff worker in her 20s cooked all sorts of dishes in a mug, including an omelet, soup and cakes.

She would put the ingredients in a cup, microwave it and in a matter of minutes lunch was ready. I asked to sample her dishes and found they were not at all bad.

Per her advice, I looked online for recipes of the kind, of which I found a countless number.

Memories of that time came back to me as I read a recent serial article on the subject of eating alone in The Asahi Shimbun’s lifestyle page.

I realized that all the mug meal recipes are for single servings and are therefore suited for the practice of eating alone.

There is a worldwide trend of eating alone, with more and more people living by themselves as nuclear families disperse.

One study has shown that about 30 percent of adults in Britain are eating alone. Popular YouTubers typically use small pots in their videos on cooking.

“Shokumotsu-shi” (History of food), a book by the cultural anthropologist Naomichi Ishige and others, cites a recipe from the Taisho Era (1912-1926) for a “chawan-mushi” steamed egg custard.

It says “100 monme (375 grams) of eggs” and “seven go (1,260cc) of soup stock,” but it doesn’t say for how many servings.

Ishige assumed the recipe is for about 10 servings and said that it marks progress over recipes from the Meiji Era (1868-1912), which described the names of the ingredients alone.

The book says recipes were typically for six servings until four servings became the standard in the early 1970s.

The recipes that appear daily in The Asahi Shimbun used to be for four servings for a long time, but two-serving and single-serving recipes began appearing in 1991.

Perhaps eating alone is finally becoming the order of the day 100 years from the Taisho Era.

One might be tempted to know how the trend will affect human health. A research paper says the more people you eat with, the more food you tend to consume.

I would dream of a recipe that is at once healthy, simple, cheap and applicable to any number of servings.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 21

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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