Restaurant critics appear to have the best job in journalism, enjoying meals a few nights a week on someone else's dime.
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But New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells had painted a more complicated picture. In a recent column, Wells announced he's leaving the beat because the constant eating has led to obesity and other health problems.
"Intellectually, it was still really 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 metabolise food the way I used to, I can't metabolise alcohol the way I used to and I just don't need to eat as much as I did even 10 years ago."
To write a review, food critics usually make two or three visits to a restaurant and bring a handful of dining companions so they can taste as many dishes as possible. If the restaurant has a special focus on wine or cocktails or desserts, they try those, too.
"You have to sample the full range of the menu," said Ligaya Figueras, the senior food editor and lead dining critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "If I really felt like a salad today, I can't just have the salad."
All that restaurant eating can take a toll.
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 per cent of meals at full-service US restaurants - and 70 per cent of those at fast-food restaurants - were of poor nutritional quality, according to American Heart Association guidelines. Less than one per cent were of ideal quality.
Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and Tufts professor who was one of the study's authors, said restaurant meals tend to be lower than ideal in whole grains and legumes, modestly lower in fruits and vegetables, and modestly higher in salt and saturated fat.
Wells isn't the only restaurant critic to make a change in recent years. Adam Platt stopped covering restaurants for New York magazine in 2022, also citing the toll on his health. Wyatt Williams stopped covering restaurants for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2019, saying he had simply lost his appetite.
Wells will file a few more reviews before stepping down in early August.
He will remain with the Times. Times food writers Melissa Clark and Priya Krishna will step in as restaurant critics on an interim basis, the newspaper said.
Wells said he will continue to go to restaurants and maybe even enjoy them more now that he's not distracted by work.
"Eating out constantly, you lose touch with your own normal appetite," he said. "I didn't know anymore what was normal for me."
Australian Associated Press
