Washington Post Article Promotes the Power of Fueling with Potatoes

The Washington Post touted the performance benefits of potatoes in a feature story that recognized Potatoes USA’s years-long efforts to educate consumers and athletes about the benefits of fueling athletic performance with spuds.

The article, “Powered by potatoes: Endurance athletes are chasing speed with spuds,” features several athletes and their specific potato-fueling routines. From canned to homemade mashed potatoes, athletes appreciate the “mild, carbohydrate-packed fuel option” as a real food alternative to gels or gummies. In fact, the article references research published in 2019 and funded by the Alliance for Potato Research & Education (APRE), which found that russet potatoes performed similarly to packaged carbohydrate gels in improving trained cyclists’ endurance.

The article’s author, Kate Bernot, is an athlete herself and started seeing more of her peers using potatoes as fuel on race trails. She traced it back to Potatoes USA’s “Potatoes Fuel Performance” marketing campaign, which started in 2018. She writes, “These promotional efforts – combined with athletes’ famous appreciation for carbs – are changing some runners’ perceptions of the humble potato.”

The article also includes an interview with Ainsley Chapman, Potatoes USA’s most recent Speedy Spud, who ran the Salt Lake City Half-Marathon in April wearing a potato costume.

“Attracting attention so that people think about potatoes is the whole point,” she told The Post.

The article also gives a shout-out to Team Potato, which has grown to more than 21,000 members and has seen over 300,000 participants in sponsored Strava challenges, which began in 2023. (Strava is an app that helps its 150 million users record all types of activity to inspire their athletic performance.) Team Potato members have collectively logged more than 32 million potato-fueled miles of activity on the app.

As the article says, runners’ enthusiasm for potatoes “goes beyond the vegetable’s nutritional value. It’s fun, and even counterintuitive, to be an endurance athlete who appreciates the quotidian, modest potato.”

Click here to download a copy of the article.