The $70 billion diet industry suffers many fools, including journalist Barry Estabrook, who found himself approaching the age of 60 with the alarming doctor’s orders that he needed to lose 40 pounds. “I went on the Whole30 for precisely the wrong reason,” he says of the popular diet that eliminates “psychologically unhealthy, hormone-unbalanced, gut-disrupting, inflammatory food groups” (read: no sugar, grains, dairy, alcohol, or most legumes). “I suffered for a month, lost some weight, and promptly gained back every ounce, so I said to myself that there had to be a better way—and realized at about the same time that I should heed my own advice and thoroughly understand what I was eating,” he says. 

The result is the deeply reported, page-turning Just Eat: Estabrook’s first-person account of road testing the world’s most popular diets, including paleo, the Master Cleanse, South Beach, WW (formerly Weight Watchers), and the Mediterranean diet. Estabrook is behind deep dives into agriculture practices and policy, including the best-selling Tomatoland, which looked at the human and environmental costs of tomato growing in America. 

Just Eat follows this reporting process, but with some small twists and snark that recalls more the work of Bill Buford than of Michael Pollan. Entering a no-spoiler zone, the book concludes that most diets are kinda bullshit, while unpacking the author’s own hang-ups with food—from the perspective of an on-the-clock “food professional.” Jacques Pépin makes an appearance, and some calm is restored. It’s a riveting read, and, as Estabrook says in this interview, eating is a personal thing—and far from prescriptive. —Matt Rodbard

Let’s start with where you began—40 pounds overweight and facing some tough lab results (high cholesterol, even when meds were maxed out). How did you get to this place? Describe your diet.
Frankly, it didn’t seem fair. I’d always eaten whole foods and avoided processed stuff. I’m blessed with whatever the opposite of a sweet tooth is called, so I rarely have desserts, candy, or sugary drinks. In retrospect, it wouldn’t have hurt to cut back on my red meat consumption. Those 40 pounds come on insidiously at an average rate of about a pound a year. But until those lab results came back, I really didn’t worry about my weight. It didn’t affect my professional or romantic life. I was physically strong and active—cross-country skiing, bicycling, hiking, canoeing.

You wrote books about industrial agriculture and the modern meat industry. Should you have known better than to get yourself in that spot of being 40 pounds overweight, or was the root of your weight gain something that was unavailable for even the most informed eater?
Damn right I should have known better. I mean, I was one of those people who wouldn’t eat farmed salmon, store-bought ground beef, or Florida tomatoes because of environmental and political issues. I was even a past editor of EatingWell magazine, which is all about healthful food. I simply ignored the link between my eating and drinking habits and my expanding waistline. It was only after I applied the same journalistic techniques I used in other areas to the whole diet and weight loss phenomenon that I figured out how to drop those unwanted pounds.