I sat down with Zoe H Rom—co-host of Your Diet Sucks and a longtime fixture of outdoor and environmental journalism—for a conversation about food culture, politics, and endurance sport.
We covered a lot of ground:
What sport has to do with climate coverage — including how the same satellite data NOAA uses for climate research also forecasts NCAA baseball, and what sled dog racing in rural Alaska reveals about climate as a lived issue rather than an abstract one.
The trouble with “sustainability” in running and outdoor media — why so much of it ends up individuating a systemic problem, and what that means for how gear and races get written about.
Are athletes unusually prone to diet pseudoscience? — or is it more about the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
The Enhanced Games as an accidental experiment — what happened when athletes tried to escape the usual rules around banned substances, and what that ended up looking like in practice.
Make America Healthy Again’s food critique — what real concern it taps into, and where the proposed fixes miss the actual problem.
On embracing uncertainty — on living in a glut of confident answers, and what might be lost by not making more room for open questions.
Your Diet Sucks, hosted by Zoë Rom and Kylee Van Horn, is available wherever you get podcasts.
Why should athletes consider cultural history when they approach food? Zoë digs into it.
Does Your Diet Suck?
Last week, I went to Whole Foods and nearly had a panic attack in the yogurt aisle.
