Food critic’s departure reveals potential dangers of the profession
Restaurant critics seem to have the best job in journalism, enjoy meals a few nights a week at someone else’s expense.
But New York Times Food critic Pete Wells painted a more complicated picture. In a recent column, Wells announced that he was leaving the job because the constant eating led to obesity and other health problems.
“Intellectually, it was still very stimulating, but my body started to rebel and say, ‘Enough,’” Wells told The Associated Press. “I had to face the reality that I can’t metabolize food like I used to, I can’t metabolize alcohol like I used to, and I don’t need to eat as much as I did 10 years ago.”
To write a review, food critics They usually make two or three visits to a restaurant and bring a handful of dining companions so they can sample as many dishes as possible. Restaurant focuses on wine, cocktails or desserts, they try them too.
“You have to taste the whole menu,” said Ligaya Figueras, food editor and senior restaurant critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If I really want a salad today, I can’t just have the salad.”
Special features, like lists of the best places to get pizza or burgers, can keep critics eating the same thing for weeks. MacKenzie Chung Fegan, a restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has sampled Peking duck all over town for an article about a restaurant specializing in this dish.
“There was a two-week period where I was eating more duck than my doctor recommended,” Fegan said.
All that restaurant dining can take a toll. In a 2020 study published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy found that 50% of meals at full-service restaurants in the United States—and 70% of those at Fast food — were of poor nutritional quality, according to American Heart Association guidelines. Less than 1% were of ideal quality.
Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor at Tufts who is one of the study’s authors, said restaurant meals tend to be lower in whole grains and legumes than he expected, slightly lower in fruits and vegetables and slightly lower in protein. richer in salt and saturated fats.
For the period studied, between 2003 and 2016, the nutritional quality of foods in grocery stores improved, Mozaffarian said. But restaurants didn’t make similar changes, he added.
“I can’t tell you how many restaurants I go to where there are fries on everyone’s plate,” Mozaffarian said. “There’s not an equal and diverse selection of healthy and unhealthy options.”
To be fair, Fegan said, diners are looking for something delicious when they go out to eat, “and a lot of times that means something with fat and sodium.”
“If I look at the menu and ask myself, ‘What’s the most exciting thing on this menu?’ it’s probably not a side of broccoli rabe,” she said.
Figueras addresses this challenge in several ways. On nights when she doesn’t eat out, she says she’s “hypervigilant” and eats mostly vegetables. She plays tennis and walks her dog to stay in shape. And when she does eat out, she eats fruit or another healthy snack so she doesn’t arrive hungry.
“Everything tastes good when you’re hungry,” she said.
Lyndsay Green, a food and restaurant critic for the Detroit Free Press, also tries to eat healthy on her days off, getting most of her food from a local farmers market. Green said she thinks menus are becoming healthier. Many chefs are offering gluten-free or vegan options, she said, and are getting more creative with their dishes. non-alcoholic cocktail cards.
Green believes restaurant reviews can help readers by being open to their own needs. A pregnant reviewer, for example, could write a restaurant guide for other expectant parents.
“Almost everyone has health issues and dietary norms, so I think it can also be our task to talk about them in our work,” she said.
Wells isn’t the only food critic to switch careers in recent years. Adam Platt stopped covering restaurants for New York magazine in 2022, also citing health implications. Wyatt Williams stopped covering restaurants for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2019, saying he had simply lost his appetite.
Fegan and Wells both noted that women seem to have more longevity in the industry. Mimi Sheraton, a former New York Times restaurant critic, died last year at age 97 after a six-decade career in the restaurant business.
“I think if you’re socialized as a woman in America, you’ve already spent a lot of time thinking about portions and weight and control,” Fegan said.
Wells will write a few more reviews before stepping down in early August. He will remain at the Times. Times food writers Melissa Clark and Priya Krishna will serve as interim restaurant critics, the newspaper said.
Wells said he will continue to eat out and may enjoy it more now that he is no longer distracted by work. He said he would miss losing touch with New York’s seemingly endless dining scene, but he would be happy to find a better balance in his own life.
“When you eat out all the time, you lose touch with your normal appetite,” he said. “I didn’t know what was normal for me anymore.”
