During a segment of Tuesday’s Boston Public Radio, award-winning food writer Corby Kummer chimed in on hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s debate over eating alone.

“Eating alone at a bar is one of life's most satisfying occupations,” Kummer told Boston Public Radio. “I was in a lot of Boston restaurants over the weekend, and the number of people I saw either happily with a book or sitting at a bar alone and looking like there was nothing else they would rather be doing I found really striking.”

“[There was a] level of contentment — not artificially looking up as if they have a friend coming — there was none of that,” Kummer added. “There was ‘I'm happy to be here by myself.’ This is a great thing.”

Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.