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How One Food Critic Overcame His Negative Relationship With Alcohol and Sugary Drinks

In the latest episode of the month-long series, Pete Wells and experts suggest how to avoid the dangers of alcoholic or sugary drinks.

by Pete Wells

Food reporter Pete Wells was The Times’ chief restaurant critic for 12 years.

It was published January 26, 2026Updated January 26, 2026

Reset Your Appetite This is the last of Pete Wells’ four articles on how he developed healthier eating habits. First focused on reducing sugar consumption, second stocking the house with the right food and third about careful eating.

When it came time to purge some of the stupidity from my eating style, I had no problem rejecting duck skins, sticky buns, jelly beans, and other highly stimulating but ultimately insubstantial foods. The hole they left in my diet wasn’t large and could easily be filled with sensible choices.

I wasn’t all that upset about having to find more nutritious alternatives to the white rice, pasta, and other starchy foods I relied on when my stomach sounded like a can of worms. I don’t suck down bowls full of fluffy yellow ramen noodles as often as I used to, but I rely on delicious and healthy soba made with pure buckwheat flour.

Cleaning up my drinking pattern was more challenging.

Sometimes it seemed to me that I had a richer, more rewarding relationship with alcohol than I had with all but a handful of people. It was an inexhaustible workspace, an incandescent companion in great meals, a reliable solace in dull meals. And it sometimes brought me closer to my real friends, at least some of them.

But over time, rewards became more uncertain and harder to justify. It wasn’t just the weight I gained; was the predictable outcome of drinking one cocktail every night, followed by about three glasses of wine or beer. At this point these were undeniable signs that my liver was overworked.

I also slept poorly because of all the alcohol in my system, and it got worse as time went on. Everyone under the same roof has told me that my panting and snoring are not only loud but scary; it was a symptom of sleep apnea, made worse by all that drinking. I was tired all the time. Most mornings I would fall asleep in the chair after my second cup of coffee.

I mixed a teaspoon of sugar into each of these cups and two or three that I would consume after candy. My head howled in the morning for the sugar to go away, and it howled loudest on the days I was hungover.

The howling became less frequent when I started sleeping sober, and stopped when I lost enough weight to get my sleep apnea under control. When I stopped drinking, a significant portion of my daily calories were gone; some from alcohol, some from sugar in my coffee, and the rest from extra foods that alcohol makes me want to eat.

I’m always a little hungrier when I drink at dinner. My mind becomes fuzzy and unfocused; That’s the purpose of alcohol, of course, but it can cause me to lose track of which glass of wine I’m drinking.

And whatever decisions I made about not sitting down to the dessert plate, for example, would come undone as the alcohol penetrated my prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is supposed to be responsible for impulse control and judgment.

Check Next Day

Dr. D., an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. “Coffee is a healthy food in itself,” said David Ludwig. But if you add sugar, “you undermine the health benefits.”Credit…Link Images/Getty Images

In his book “The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We’re Not Hungry and How to Stop It,” Brown University behavioral and social sciences professor Judson Brewer calls alcohol a “double whammy” for eaters because alcohol clouds our judgment and clouds our perceptions.

He recommends people wait until the next morning to assess the damage.

“They want to ask in a non-judgemental way: Was this drink worth it? And, like a scientist, objectively measure the results of that drink.”

“Then compare it to what happens when they don’t drink,” he said.

Even in my sober moments, I didn’t think much about the alcohol and sugar in the liquid portion of my diet. I knew enough to stay away from soda, bottled sweet tea, and other sugary drinks; This is advice that nutritionists agree on.

I used to cringe when I saw baristas double pumping caramel syrup into someone else’s latte. But I didn’t notice how much my own coffee was starting to resemble melted ice cream, or worry too much about how my first glass of wine made it easier to order more.

When I look at the changes I’ve made, I realize I’m one of the lucky ones. Even though I enjoy alcohol, it wasn’t a necessity for me. Sometimes I have a glass or two when I go out to eat, but I don’t feel the urge to drink another, and another, and another.

Lucky for me, I enjoy my black coffee before I drag my metabolism into the ditch.

Endocrinologist Dr. “Coffee is a healthy food in itself,” said David Ludwig. researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital. “One of the nice things is that it squeezes calories out of your fat cells so you’re less hungry,” he said, citing studies that suggest caffeine stimulates lipolysis, the process of breaking down stored fat.

But when you add too much sugar, “you undermine coffee’s health benefits,” he said.

Search for Backups

I have water for most meals now, but sometimes I don’t because I’m still an interesting person, okay? I make a lot of agua frescas, especially for Mexican dishes, and I find that they don’t need as much sugar if they’re made with sweet ingredients like melon, cucumber, and pineapple. In Mexico they are often strained, but I usually leave the pulp in, which slows down the rate at which the sugar enters the bloodstream.

A yellow beverage pitcher sits next to a cutting board piled high with pineapple and lemon peels, cucumber peels and mint sprigs. — Agua fresca made with pineapple and cucumber doesn’t need much, if any, sweetener.Credit…Julia Gartland of the New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.

Last summer, I tried the Indian spiced lemonade known as shikanji or nimbu pani to see how sour I could drink it before grimacing. The toasted cumin and black rock salt, with the sulfurous flavor of the boiled egg, distracted me from the sugar reduction to some extent. Maybe next summer I’ll cut out sugar completely like some people in India have done.

I enjoy the Sugar-Free Cape Cod soft drink served at Superior Burger in Manhattan; A mixture of unadulterated cranberry juice and plenty of seltzer. It’s lean and powerful, and usefully cleans the mouth between bites.

Unsweetened iced tea, the old helper of the abstainer, has saved me many times. Like wine, tea contains tannins, which provide friction to richer foods, but very strong teas can be challenging at the table. I prefer the smoother effect provided by cold brewing for a few hours. Oolong and hojicha respond well to this treatment. Korean barley tea also goes very well with food, but of course it’s not a real tea.

There are nights when I feel lucky to live in a glorious age when humanity has finally figured out how to make non-alcoholic beer taste good. When drunk with food, it behaves more or less the same way real beer does, except it’s not as good at removing capsaicin, the substance that makes peppers spicy. Non-alcoholic wine and cocktails haven’t made it that far, but they’re much better than they used to be.

But I’m happy to say that I still drink wine every two weeks. I haven’t completely given up on the martini, which was the first drink I learned to love. Ordering one at a bar and feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with the first sip, I feel like I’ve been reunited with an old friend. She’s also one of my old friends who I don’t need to hang out with more than two or three times a year.