New York Times critic Pete Wells quit his rounds after discovering the damage eating out was doing to his health.
Wells is best known for reviewing restaurants for the Times for 12 years, tearing apart beloved institutions like Peter Luger’s steakhouse and Carbone’s.
But in a recent columnWells revealed that he is obese and suffers from significant health problems, including low cholesterol, low blood sugar and high blood pressure.
This has led Wells – and other food critics – to weigh in on the challenges of their food-tasting jobs.
“When you’ve spent enough hours in the line of duty loading your tray with mashed potatoes, biscuits, cookies and an extra slice of pie, sooner or later you have to ask yourself if you’re in line for the buffet for the public or for yourself,” Wells said.
New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells (pictured) claimed the job made him obese and led to health problems.
Wells reviewed restaurants for 12 years for the Times, eviscerating beloved institutions like Peter Luger’s steakhouse (food pictured).
‘Virtually all of my 500 reviews were the result of eating three times at the place I was writing about. I usually took three people with me and asked each of them to order an appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert. That meant I tried 36 dishes before I wrote a single word.
‘Then there are the reference meals, the ones we eat to be informed, to not be a fraud. That’s often where I got into serious trouble.’
Other food critics shared with Wells the challenges of the job, saying that visiting multiple restaurants a week and trying everything on the menu takes its toll.
“You have to try everything on the menu,” said Ligaya Figueras, senior food editor and chief food critic for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “If I really feel like having a salad today, I can’t just eat the salad.”
San Francisco Chronicle food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan sampled Peking duck around the city for a story about a restaurant that specialized in the dish.
“There was a two-week period where I ate more duck than any doctor would recommend,” Fegan said.
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 percent of meals at U.S. full-service restaurants (and 70 percent of those at fast-food restaurants) were of poor nutritional quality, according to American Heart Association guidelines. Less than 1 percent were of ideal quality.
Wells criticized the all-vegan 2021 tasting menu at three-Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park (pictured, eggplant dish with tomato and cilantro)
Carbone, a Greenwich Village red sauce spot (rigatoni pictured) that has been a favorite of celebrities and high-status individuals, lost a Michelin star after Wells reviewed it in 2022.
Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and professor at Tufts 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.
During the period examined by the study, from 2003 to 2016, the nutritional quality of food in supermarkets improved, Mozaffarian said, but restaurants did not make similar changes, he said.
“I can’t tell you how many restaurants I go to and every single plate has French fries,” Mozaffarian said. “There’s not an equal and diverse array of healthy and unhealthy menu options.”
To be fair, Fegan said, diners are looking for something delicious when they eat out, “and a lot of times that means something with fat and sodium.”
“If I look at the menu and think, ‘What’s the most exciting thing on this menu?’ it’s probably not a side of broccoli rabe,” she said.
Figueras is tackling the challenge in several ways. On nights when he doesn’t eat out, he says he’s “hypervigilant” and eats mostly vegetables. He plays tennis and walks his dog to stay fit. And when he goes to a restaurant, he eats fruit or another healthy snack so he doesn’t go home hungry.
“Everything tastes good when you’re hungry,” he said.
Wells and other critics have said the challenges of their food tasting jobs include having to eat out several times a week.
Restaurant critics said one of the downsides is having to try dishes from the entire menu when they may not be what they’re craving that day.
Detroit Free Press food and restaurant critic Lyndsay Green also tries to eat healthy on her days off and gets most of her food at a local farmers market.
Green says he thinks menus are becoming healthier. Many chefs are offering gluten-free or vegan options, he said, and are getting more creative with their mocktail menus.
She believes restaurant critics can help readers by being open about their own needs. A pregnant critic, for example, could write a restaurant guide for other expectant parents.
“Almost everyone has health concerns and dietary standards, so I think it can be our job to talk about that in our work as well,” she said.
Wells will file a few more reviews before stepping down in early August, but will remain at the Times. Times food writers Melissa Clark and Priya Krishna will take over as food critics on an interim basis, the paper said.
Wells said he will continue to go to 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 glad to find more balance in his own life.