What is 'healthy' when you're a woman writing about food?

Last week, long time New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells announced he was stepping down from the position he has held for 12 years. In the article he penned sharing the news of his exit, he said that a recent physical had shown his “cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension” were far worse than expected, and his doctor told him he was pre-diabetic and technically obese. It wasn’t necessarily this, though, that caused him to throw in the towel (or, as he puts it in the article, ‘return the tux’). No – it was that when it came down to it, he found himself no longer hungry.

The article is an eye-opener – it discusses the early mortality rates for many committed food writers. Specifically, it touches on how men who spend their careers writing about restaurants tend to pass long before their time. The women, he adds, tend to fare a lot better. It was not an easy read. And then, I woke up on Saturday morning and came across an article published in the Guardian on Tuesday responding to Wells’ NYT piece titled “‘It’s the best job! But it will kill you’: four restaurant critics on the battle to stay healthy”.

All four restaurant critics cited were women. Direct quotes from the piece include “Nowadays, to stay at a UK size 10, at 6am every morning an app on my phone called HappyScale tells me: “TIME FOR YOUR WEIGH IN”. I comply, standing on electronic scales, while shouting expletives. There is nothing Happy about this experience,” and “These days, I only review with regular dinner dates who have massive appetites. Thank you Charles, Hugh and Tom – all men whom I require no social battery to dine with, who will let me try a taste of 11 dishes, then polish off what’s left.”

This overlooks the fact that society doesn't demand visual markers of 'health' from men in the same way it does from women

It was, frankly, a gutting read. It is difficult enough working in food and dealing with all of the ways that changes your body and balancing that with societal expectations around body image, especially in this ozempic era, without an entire article dedicated to how women food writers are staying ‘healthy’ (which seems, in this context, like a thinly veiled synonym for slim), and the implications radiating from it that you should be maintaining a particular body image. Never mind the fact that the article from Pete Wells quite clearly mentions that women in food writing tend to be outliving the men in food writing and, as such, it seems this issue of ‘health’ seems to be a topic far more relevant for the men who do it. But, this overlooks the fact that society doesn't demand visual markers of 'health' from men in the same way it does from women.

Just last week I had been complaining to my mum that my body no longer felt like ‘mine’ anymore. Despite my regular exercise, I don’t seem to have any control over the breadth of my waistline, and I was convinced I had some kind of thyroid problem. “Maybe you should go a few weeks without eating at a restaurant?” she tempered. “Just to see how it makes you feel?”

The idea, to me, was preposterous. But Wells’ thoughts lingered in my head as I packed my bags last Friday and headed off to Slovenia for a veritable extravaganza of gluttony where I would be eating at three-Michelin-star Hiša Franko not once but twice over the course of a weekend – first from the standard menu, and then again for a special collaboration dinner with Santiago Lastra and his team at KOL. It was a cornucopia of excellent food; the kind of weekend that reminds me why I do this job in the first place. I wolfed down course after course of exceptionally balanced dishes that had us all in rapturous silence and threw back thoughtful wine pairings from fascinating small Slovenian producers with reckless abandon, not thinking once about the size of my jeans or the dimples on my thighs.

Except for the fact that I was. I got up on the Saturday morning and, through the fog of a hangover, took myself off for a run. On the Sunday, I pushed through a HIIT workout in my hotel room before powering up a series of hills in the exceptionally beautiful rural Kobarid countryside on a foraging expedition, sweat beading at my temples. I wish I could tell you I did it just because I wanted to, or that I pounded that pavement through pure consideration for my health. But that would be a lie. I did it because I thought it might help mitigate the impact of the upcoming day’s gorging on my belly.

I am a woman in my twenties. I have spent my entire life being told I should look a certain way or fit a certain size. As I started working in food and felt my body expand with each feast consumed in the name of journalism, it seemed that all of my friends were going in the opposite direction, slimming down as we grew out of the party days of our early twenties and began running marathons rather than putting in herculean stints on nightclub floors. Even in my most clear-headed moments, it is impossible to not see that your jeans are getting bigger while everyone else's seem to be getting smaller. Would I still have made sure to exercise every day I was in Slovenia if I was a man? I don’t know. Maybe! But possibly not. Behaviour like that is the result of years of the perpetuation of insidious, inescapable diet culture. It’s the result of decades of reading articles like the one the Guardian published this weekend.

Behaviour like that is the result of years of the perpetuation of insidious, inescapable diet culture

Pete Wells’ article was, in many ways, something of a breath of fresh air. It taught me that being preoccupied with how this job is impacting how I look isn’t just the reserve of young women. The Guardian article sucked that air right back out of me.

Despite all of that, in Slovenia I ate with joy. I slurped back tagliolini in an unctuous, delicately spiced clam and melon sauce. I ate not one but three corn beignets packed full of fermented ricotta, trout’s roe and wild chive. I somehow found the space at the end of a 15-course meal to snaffle back three tacos piled high with carnitas, rhubarb pico de gallo and sungold salsa. I relished each vibrant wine that came along, swishing them around my mouth, coating each little taste receptor with bone-tinglingly good plonk. I returned to London and let myself eat homemade gnocchi for dinner because I don’t need to punish myself on my days off for simply doing my job. And I decided that, at the end of the day, if I really cared about being skinny I simply wouldn’t be in this line of work. Much like Pete Wells, the day that I wake up and find my infinite well of gluttony depleted, my hands grasping for oat crackers as a substitute for lunch and my plate remaining uncleared, I’ll simply get a new job.