MasterChef regular and food critic Grace Dent on staying healthy when eating is your job

Restaurant critic Grace Dent has spent much of her career sampling rich, delicious foods – and by her own admission, has to be “very careful” about how much she eats.

“I have to be very careful about what I eat because I put on weight really easily,” says the celebrated food writer and restaurant critic.

Dent, who grew up in a working-class family in Carlisle, recalls: “My family are just those types of people who come from an entire background of women who naturally fit about a size 16-18. Every woman in my family looked like that.

“I try my absolute best to be – what’s the word? I don’t think I suit skinny. I look ill right away. I’m quite a curvy, busty type of person. But I know that when I get bigger, I then stop exercising. Once I stop exercising, I start feeling sadder. And then my health goes and I haven’t got enough energy.

“So, I’ve always been on a health kick since I was nine years old, like almost all women. I have to be very conscious of what I’m eating.”

The popular food writer – whose entertaining new book Comfort Eating explores what we eat when nobody’s looking, inspired by her award-winning podcast of the same name – has to go to three restaurants a week on average for her job.

When she’s in the MasterChef studios for a day’s filming,  she’ll try perhaps eight rounds of tiny mouthfuls of very rich food. Here, Dent tells us more…

Does your job interfere with keeping a balanced diet?

“I do have to monitor every day how much food I have to eat for work, how many restaurants I have to go to, just trying to keep a balanced diet. I don’t think it’s easy in this day and age.”

How much do you comfort eat?

“I comfort eat every day, but not to excess. If I have that toast and that piece of chocolate, then I would eat lighter in other ways.”

How hungry do you get?

“My main thing now is that I am determined that I will never be hungry,” says Dent, who lives in East London. “I spent so many years totally cutting back on food during the Eighties and Nineties – when it was all ‘eat 1,000 calories a day’ and go to bed hungry. It’s the same now with intermittent fasting – it’s just rebadged being hungry.

Do you do much exercise?

“Yes. Now, as I’ve got older, I feel like exercising is really important. I just want to stay as mobile as possible. So I walk about five miles a day. I think that’s what keeps me how I’m looking at the moment. And I don’t drink alcohol, I’m completely sober.

Do you leave a lot on your plate when reviewing a restaurant?

“I couldn’t possibly eat everything that I have to do for reviewing. I always eat with somebody, often my other half, or I’ve got a couple of good friends that go with me a lot.

“We order a load of different things. A lot of protein, then sides, which are always the most delicious things, the potatoes, the rice and the sides of pasta and the breads. I try to go as light as I can on the carbs side of it, because I could polish off a whole bread basket and side of dauphinoise potatoes and that would be my ideal dinner.

“I try to look at it as a job, though. Being a restaurant critic is a job. Some people in the past definitely have thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just go and eat everything’, but I have to be a bit more strategic because I want to to stay alive. I want to keep on doing it until I’m very old. The only way I can do that is to moderate.”

You’ve just turned 50 – how does that feel?

“If I’m being sane and rational, turning 50 is a massive privilege, because so many people around me along the way didn’t. I just think that being 50 is actually quite amazing. I’m beginning to lean into it. I like the fact that I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore.

“I quite like being the grown-up in the room.”

Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody’s Looking by Grace Dent is published by Faber & Faber, priced £12.99. Available now.