This summer, investigators looked into the University of Colorado Boulder’s (UCB) cross-country teams and their nutrition practices. They then released an 82-page report detailing the toxic team culture created by strictly supervised body composition programs. The body composition analysis, conducted using sum-of-seven testing, correlated with negative emotional reactions in athletes. According to the report, It also exacerbated disordered eating symptoms in many, mainly female, athletes.
The university updated some of its testing and nutrition guidelines. Nowadays, the UCB hopes to move on from the investigation and promote a healthier team culture. The scrutiny of such a renowned collegiate running program, however, leaves other higher education institutions grappling with a key issue:
How do they best maximize an athlete’s performance without negatively impacting their long-term health?
An August introduction
Early August, NCC’s athletic department announced a partnership with ZoneIn—a nutrition app designed to meet each athlete’s individual needs. The app intends to provide athletes, both on the professional and collegiate level, with personalized meal suggestions. The dietary advice lines up with each athlete’s training schedule and goals.
Dr. Brittany James holds the position of Director of Sports Medicine and Assistant Director of Athletics for Healthcare at NCC. She says the department underwent a rigorous vetting process to determine whether the app would be a good fit for the school. They met with one of the app’s developers, athletic administration, coaches and a committee of student-athletes.
During each step, they worked to determine if the app would act as a good fit for the nutritional needs of NCC athletes. James estimates close to eight meetings were conducted before the initial press release in August.
A tool for injury prevention and treatment
With nutrition questions coming from coaches, athletes and SAAC, athletic training hopes to use ZoneIn both as a proactive and reactive tool.
In a reactive sense, if multiple athletes from the same sport come forward with similar injuries, trainers can look towards the app’s data to see which trends pop up across the team. They will search for vitamin deficiencies, lack of hydration and insufficiency of other key nutrients. According to James, specific struggles accompany each sport—teams that practice outside during the hotter months may deal more with dehydration and cramps—so ZoneIn can help pinpoint areas of growth for different teams.
Additionally, the app can be used to preemptively help athletes avoid injury or nutritional issues. James brings up those with Celiac, Crohn’s and IBS as just a few examples of those who could benefit from tracking their information in ZoneIn.
Using ZoneIn, athletic trainers can point athletes towards options on the dining hall menus that will work within their restrictions while still providing them with proper nourishment.
Overall, James is confident that ZoneIn will help athletes prevent both training and diet problems. It will also help find the root causes of any illness or injuries that do crop up.
“This would be another tool, just like your medical history, your teammates and your coach, to notify that something might be going on,” said James.
An opportunity for education
Another decisive goal for NCC’s athletic training is to educate NCC about nutrition. James emphasizes the need to inform students, especially student-athletes, about how to make appropriate healthcare decisions for themselves. She recounts stories of students who moved off-campus for the first time and had no idea how to cook their own meals, let alone which groceries to buy. She and the other athletic trainers hope that ZoneIn will remedy that.
“I think we’ve always focused on trying to create student athletes that, once they leave North Central, have a better health literacy and relationship with their body than others. And this was a really great way to do that,” said James.
Getting set up
In preparation of the app’s launch, athletic training automatically created accounts for all NCC athletes. Most sports teams downloaded the app during their NCAA compliance meetings. Some of them, however, were told to download the app during the summer.
When athletes log on, they are greeted with introductory questions about themselves: birthday, height, weight and whether they would like to gain, maintain or lose weight. The app then asks about their specific sport, levels of activity per day and any dietary restrictions or allergies.
After the athlete inputs their information, ZoneIn then formulates goals for their caloric intake, macronutrients, hydration and mealtimes.
Logging logistics
Throughout the day, an athlete logs their food, water and exercise intake. While doing so, the rings representing their intake targets will gradually fill until completion.
Based off an athlete’s dietary restrictions and nutrient needs, ZoneIn offers a variety of meal and snack recommendations. It also includes lists of nutrition information for restaurants that athletes can reference. This aspect of it, James notes, will help sports teams that travel during their seasons. Now, athletes will have a way to keep up with their eating goals while away for competitions.
Certain foods, however, are noticeably lacking in the recommendations section. Most notably, dessert, a fact that Taylor Smith, ’25—a member of the Women’s Soccer and Lacrosse teams—points out when talking about some of her concerns regarding ZoneIn.
Smith appreciates the app for its useful resources, especially the hydration tool. Despite this, she worries that its tracking properties may lead to some athletes becoming obsessive about their daily intakes. Smith is not the only one expressing these concerns.
ZoneIn—a possible launching pad for disordered eating
Allison Grady, ’23, acts as a research coordinator at the University of Louisville Eating Anxiety Treatment (EAT) Lab and co-founder of The Body Collective at NCC. She worries that the implementation of ZoneIn could lead to higher numbers of NCC athletes struggling with disordered eating.
Eating disorders in athletes are no rarity. Studies over the past couple of decades show that up to 84% of collegiate athletes self-report engaging in maladaptive eating patterns. Many of these studies highlight that female athletes tend to be affected by disordered eating at higher rates than male athletes. Sports that focus heavily on aesthetics, endurance and weight categories all show higher rates of eating disorders.
Disordered eating in athletics can lead to a variety of issues. These include increased risk of injury, relative energy deficiency in sports (RED-S) and poor sport performance.
Grady emphasizes that perfectionism is a common trait among many people suffering from eating disorders. It also just so happens to be incredibly common in high-achieving athletes. With the introduction of a new app that asks athletes to meet specific food and nutrient requirements, she fears this could either accelerate or jumpstart disordered eating for some NCC athletes.
“I think perfectionism is a risk factor that can be exacerbated in this setting, because if you are a perfectionist and you’re logging all of your food, it’s going to make you become homed in on what you’re putting in your body. You’re going to become preoccupied with numbers and healthy foods,” said Grady.
Triggering tracking
Not only does the implementation of an app that so concisely tracks caloric intake information pose the risk of worsening existing eating disorders, but it could even act as a trigger for someone with no prior disordered eating history.
Grady brings up the Diathesis-stress model. This psychological theory underscores how innate biological factors and life events combine to lead to a disorder.
In Grady’s words, “You could be biologically predisposed, psychologically predisposed, or socially predisposed to having an eating disorder, for example, but if there isn’t some sort of trigger that causes that predisposition to switch on, like a light switch, you’re not going to develop an eating disorder.”
On a psychological level, one of Grady’s main concerns rests on the fact that the introduction of this app could potentially act as a triggering event for some NCC athletes. Athletes who have never encountered food intake tracking before now run the risk of becoming fixated on the numbers. That has the potential to spiral into something more sinister.
Dr. Carly Drake is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at NCC and co-founder of The Body Collective alongside Grady. She researches consumer sociology, specifically gender embodiment and mental health in sports and fitness culture. Drake echoes Grady’s concerns, raising points about self-surveillance and its effects on an athlete’s behavior.
Drake acknowledges the positives of using an app that allows coaches and athletic trainers to keep an eye out for worrisome eating habits. Nonetheless, she also recognizes that outside monitoring of one’s behaviors can lead to internalized surveillance.
An athlete, expecting their coach or trainer to watch their eating habits and is determined to be their best, may begin changing their eating or exercise habits. Drake refers to this surveillance as a “possible gateway to modifying behavior to be more within the norm.”
Different athletes, different needs
Another question sits at the forefront of the conversation around ZoneIn: who does the app most benefit?
Founding ZoneIn in 2018, co-founders Kush Mahan and Craig Freidman first received investment from Techstars Sports Accelerator and professional and ex-professional NFL players.
Their target market is pro sports teams and Division I colleges. That said, their main clients include NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and Premier League teams, as well as Division I collegiate programs. The demographics of the app’s early investors and customers, with the exception of Techstar Sports Accelerator and DI programs, appear heavily male-focused.
According to Grady, potential gender bias in the app could lead to its own set of challenges. One of the main things, Grady points out, is that the app relies solely on BMI to indicate an athlete’s health. As a measurement, however, BMI offers limited information.
“BMI isn’t an accurate predictor of health. Body weight is going to fluctuate and especially when you have more muscle mass, BMI doesn’t account for muscle mass, and so the BMI could say that you’re overweight,” said Grady.
The issue, however, extends further than the limited knowledge that BMI offers. For many female athletes, one of the best indicators of good health is the presence of a menstrual cycle. The loss of a regular menstrual cycle can indicate overexercise or nutrition issues. Grady notes that female athletes also need to consume more potentially differing nutrients based on their stage of menstruation.
Grady appreciates that the app is offered to male and female athletes. However, she also warns that “men’s and women’s bodies have different needs”—needs that the app may not account for.
Current safeguards
Anticipating many of these same concerns, ZoneIn has certain safeguards to prevent negative, food-related spirals.
For one, any athletes uncomfortable with seeing the numbers associated with their eating habits can get them switched off. Only the goal circles will remain, allowing said athletes to keep on track with their daily goals but without specific figures weighing heavily on their minds.
Not only that but student-athletes with nutritionists can add them to their accounts. This gives the student the ability to share their data with them. They can also send messages directly through the app, a feature important to James.
“There are a lot of connection points for if someone was going through extensive rehab or clinical care. They could have access to that and really use the tool to actually help them, ” said James.
Furthermore, James takes care to emphasize that the app is not mandatory. Although student-athlete Smith shares that the app did seem mandatory upon its first introduction, James insists that students who do not want to download the app are under no obligation to do so. According to James, its intent is to be used as a tool available to the student-athlete if they choose it.
Drake does ask a critical question: “do you opt into the app, or do you opt out of the app?” To her, the difference between those two options—opting in or opting out—makes a world of difference.
“If we’re making something the norm on campus, that’s setting a standard. So, opting out can make you feel alienated, and the words that we’re using around this app are really powerful,” said Drake.
For many, this uncertainty surrounding the app, its uses and its place in all student-athletes’ lives comes down to a need for more information.
Moving forward
Smith, Drake and Grady all call for further conversations on disordered eating in athletics. Both Drake and Grady suggest a seminar hosted by The Body Collective for athletic training and coaches. They could learn to recognize disordered eating warning signs in athletes, as well as how to support them best. For all of them, the solution lies in opening the dialogue surrounding nutrition and athletics.
“In thinking about the data and thinking about this specific kind of case study, I think the more information we can equip the student athletes with about this app, both its positives and its negatives, the better,” said Drake.
Grady even suggests implementing an eating disorder screening for athletes to take prior to beginning athletics in the fall. Similar to the COVID-19 screenings used a couple of years previously, Grady reckons a screening for disordered eating in the ATS portal could work much the same way. Before downloading ZoneIn, the athlete would answer a series of questions. This would ultimately determine whether they seem in a healthy state to participate in the app’s tracking.
Moving forward, having learned from the immediate backlash after ZoneIn’s first introduction, athletic training hopes to improve its communication with students. According to James, SAAC plays a vital role, acting as a liaison between athletic training and athletes. The students on the committee also serve as a voice for any concerns student-athletes may have.
Athletic training has made conscious strides towards addressing student mental health in the past couple of years, including recently adding a mental health screening to concussion tests, and they want to continue to build on the progress.
“What I really hope is that our student-athletes feel really empowered to come talk to us and see that we’re really trying to build something for them, to make sure that they’re more than just student-athletes on campus,” said James.
The future of ZoneIn at NCC
With the fall competition season ramping up, the conversation surrounding ZoneIn remains far from over. For now, the app remains in use. Nevertheless, student-athletes, coaches and athletic training continue to grapple with ZoneIn’s uses and potential pitfalls.
In talking about the controversy surrounding the app, however, Drake asks a series of powerful questions to consider: “What are the outcomes of this kind of technology? Are we happier? Are we healthier? And how are we measuring these things?”
