To Save His Life, Our Food Critic Reset His Appetite

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Michael Barbaro** (0:30)
Hello, Pete.

**Pete Wells** (0:31)
Hi, Michael.

**Michael Barbaro** (0:33)
Take a seat, make yourself comfortable. A former restaurant critic bearing gifts.

**Pete Wells** (0:38)
I've brought you a present.

**Michael Barbaro** (0:41)
Tell me about this present.

**Pete Wells** (0:43)
It's a six-pack of little mini boxes of California raisins, and I thought we could each eat one raisin.

**Michael Barbaro** (0:54)
Just one?

**Pete Wells** (0:55)
One raisin.

**Michael Barbaro** (0:56)
Okay. What are we up to here?

**Pete Wells** (0:58)
This is something that's called the raisin exercise. Sometimes it's called the raisin meditation because it comes ultimately from a Zen Buddhist perspective on eating.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:13)
Okay.

**Pete Wells** (1:14)
And the world of mindfulness.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:17)
So, I hadn't anticipated that that could ever revolve around a raisin.

**Pete Wells** (1:19)
It can revolve around anything. So, we could be doing this with an M&M or a…

**Michael Barbaro** (1:25)
From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily on Sunday.

**Pete Wells** (1:30)
I'm going to open this box of raisins.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:31)
Recently, I sat down with former Times restaurant critic Pete Wells for a very small meal. Can I eat it?

**Pete Wells** (1:41)
You cannot eat it.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:43)
It consisted of one raisin.

**Pete Wells** (1:46)
You can have more later, but we'll start with one.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:48)
First we looked at this raisin. Lots of veins and ridges. Then we smelled the raisin.

**Pete Wells** (1:56)
Let's give it a sniff.

**Michael Barbaro** (1:58)
Then we took one tiny bite of the raisin.

**Pete Wells** (2:02)
I want to keep chewing so badly.

**Michael Barbaro** (2:03)
And then finally and mercifully, we ate it.

**Pete Wells** (2:08)
What changed?

**Michael Barbaro** (2:09)
Everything. I mean, it's unlocked its flavor. All in all, it took us 25 minutes to eat one raisin. Everything about this violates my sense of how food is to be consumed.

**Pete Wells** (2:21)
Right.

**Michael Barbaro** (2:22)
If it's not already abundantly clear, my colleague Pete Wells, who was the restaurant critic here at The Times for 12 celebrated years, he has been on a mission to completely transform his relationship with eating. And this exercise, the raisin meditation, was one way that he learned how to slow down and really pay attention to the food that he was consuming and why he was consuming it. But for Pete, this larger mission, this resetting of his relationship with food, it wasn't about a trendy diet, and it wasn't about losing weight to look better. It was a matter of life or death. Today, my conversation with Pete Wells about how and why he went from being the king of indulgence to a model of austerity. It's Sunday, March 15th.
Pete, welcome to The Sunday Daily.

**Pete Wells** (3:35)
Thank you.

**Michael Barbaro** (3:37)
I just have to say that this single raisin routine, this exercise you put us through, it feels very far from the relationship with food that defined the last decade of your life and your career as the restaurant critic for the Times. And it seems like you're changed.

**Pete Wells** (3:59)
Well, I used to eat a lot more than one raisin.
And I didn't think particularly about whether I wanted that raisin or needed that raisin or whether that raisin was going to fill me up. I used to ignore a lot of messages that I was getting from my body. And those messages might have told me to slow down, might have told me to eat less, but I couldn't afford to listen to them. And if I had continued that way, it would have been a disaster for me. I was in so much trouble from basically pretending that I could eat and eat and eat with no consequence.

**Michael Barbaro** (4:48)
So that's really what I wanted you to come here and talk about. Those consequences and what you have done to address them. So I wonder if you could go back to the beginning of all of this. How did this start for you?

**Pete Wells** (5:07)
Well, on New Year's Day, 2024, I was sitting in a sauna with a doctor. I was at a party. The doctor was at the party and the host of the party has a sauna in the back of his house. So I was sitting there in my bathing suit, chatting with this guy about how the health industry is changing and how journalism is changing. And I thought we were having a perfectly pleasant conversation and I had charmed him.