Restaurant critics seem to have the best job in journalism, enjoying meals a few nights a week at someone else’s expense.
But New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells painted a more complicated picture. In a recent column, Wells announced that he is quitting pacing because the constant eating caused him to obesity and other health problems.
“Intellectually, it was still very stimulating, but my body started to rebel and say, ‘Enough is enough,’” Wells told the Associated Press. “I just had to come face to face with the reality that I can’t metabolize food like I used to, I can’t metabolize alcohol like I used to, and I just don’t need to eat as much as I used to. up to 10 years ago.”
To write a comment, food critics They usually make two or three visits to a restaurant and bring a few companions so they can taste as many dishes as possible. If the restaurant has a special focus on wines, cocktails or desserts, they also try them.
“You have to taste the full variety of the menu,” said Ligaya Figueras, senior food editor and chief food critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If I really feel like eating a salad today, I can’t just eat the salad.”
Feature articles, like lists of the best places to buy pizza or burgers, can leave critics eating the same food for weeks. San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan tasted Peking duck all over the city in search of an article about a restaurant specializing in the dish.
“There was a two-week period where I ate more duck than the doctor would advise,” Fegan said.
All that restaurant food can be expensive. In a 2020 study published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University found that 50% of meals at full-service restaurants in the U.S. — and 70% of those at fast food restaurants — were of low nutritional quality, according to American Heart Association guidelines. Less than 1% were of ideal quality.
Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and Tufts professor who co-authored the study, said restaurant meals tend to have fewer whole grains and legumes than ideal, modestly fewer fruits and vegetables, and modestly fewer richer in salt and saturated fat.
In the period examined by the study, between 2003 and 2016, the nutritional quality of food in supermarkets improved, Mozaffarian said. But restaurants haven’t made similar changes, he said.
“I can’t tell you how many restaurants I go to and on every person’s plate there are fries,” Mozaffarian said. “There is no equal and diverse range of healthy and unhealthy menu options.”
To be fair, Fegan said, customers are looking for something delicious when they go out to eat, “and often that means something with fat and sodium.”
“If I’m looking at the menu thinking, ‘What’s the most interesting thing on this menu?’, it’s probably not a side of broccoli rabe,” she said.
Figueras deals with the challenge in several ways. On nights when she doesn’t dine out, she says she is “hypervigilant” and eats mostly vegetables. She plays tennis and walks her dog to stay in shape. And when she goes to a restaurant, she eats fruit or another healthy snack so she doesn’t arrive hungry.
“Everything tastes good when you’re starving,” she said.
Lyndsay Green, restaurant critic for the Detroit Free Press, also tries to eat healthily on her days off, getting most of her food from a local farmers market. Green says he thinks menus are getting healthier. Many chefs are offering gluten-free or vegan options, she said, and are getting more creative with their dishes. non-alcoholic cocktail menus.
Green thinks restaurant critics can help readers by being open about their own needs. A pregnant reviewer, for example, could write a restaurant guide for other expectant parents.
“Almost everyone has concerns about health and eating patterns, so I think it might be our job to talk about that in our work as well,” she said.
Wells isn’t the only restaurant critic to make changes in recent years. Adam Platt stopped covering restaurants for New York magazine in 2022, also citing the damage to his health. Wyatt Williams stopped covering restaurants for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2019, saying he had simply lost his appetite.
Fegan and Wells noted that women look like to have more longevity in the business. Mimi Sheraton, a former restaurant critic for The New York Times, died last year at age 97 after a six-decade career in food.
“I think if you’re socialized as a woman in America, you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about portion and weight and control,” Fegan said.
Wells will present some more analysis before leaving office in early August. He will remain at the Times. Times food writers Melissa Clark and Priya Krishna will serve as restaurant critics on an interim basis, the paper said.
Wells said he will continue to frequent restaurants and perhaps even enjoy them more now that he is not distracted by work. He said he will regret losing touch with New York’s seemingly endless food scene, but will be happy to find more balance in his own life.
“By eating out constantly, you lose touch with your normal appetite,” he said. “I didn’t know what was normal for me anymore.”
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