‘Thirty-plus pills a day, on a strict schedule.’
Maria M., 27; Brooklyn, New York
An industrial designer dedicated to supplements on a regimen that rivals a full-time job.
Maria’s gateway into the world of alternative wellness was the late biologist Ray Peat. Since discovering Peat’s work, her supplement stash has taken over a corner of her bedroom. Diagnosed with ADHD, she’s come to see the condition — and the hormonal and GI issues she’s dealt with alongside it — as a tangle of overlapping afflictions. The pills are her attempt to treat the whole tangle at once.
‘Velveeta was by far the worst one, because it’s just so rich and heavy.’
Dan Wallach, 39; Cleveland
A verified “supertaster” who spent three years getting paid to sample cheese for Kraft.
Wallach talks about his old job like a former athlete talks about a season. Two hours a day, five days a week, running string cheese, cream cheese, American singles, and the dreaded Velveeta across his tongue — and swallowing every bite. He’s since become the host of a baseball history podcast, but he’s convinced his body is still paying tribute to the gig: He traces his lactose intolerance straight back to the tasting room. “It was just system overload.”
The images in this story were taken using a tiny pinhole camera inside our photographer’s mouth.
‘A kale, hemp heart, carrot, frozen fruit, yogurt, protein, oat milk smoothie.’
Greg Atkinson, 42; Hamilton, Ontario
A husband who’s made his wife the identical beverage every morning since they moved in together.
Atkinson and his wife, Katie Luong, have poured the same seven ingredients into a blender every morning since 2012, with exceptions carved out only for vacations. “We wanted something healthier than cereal,” he says, “so we combined all the trendy health foods at the time into a blender, and it became a habit.” Three blenders have died in the line of duty.
‘I’m constantly fighting an internal battle regarding eating kitchen sponges!’
Dorothy K., 36; London
An HR manager fighting a lifelong, deeply specific craving.
Dorothy traces it back to elementary school, when she used to eat upholstery foam. These days, it’s dish sponges she has to talk herself out of — a real, physical pull, she says, not unlike craving a particular food. “It’s a texture thing, mostly,” she explains, which is why the worst part isn’t the desire itself, but what happens once the sponge breaks down: “It just dissolves into grit, which is just depressing.”
‘I decided to only drink water for a week. A week has turned into seven years.’
Tyler Olney, 26; Wapato, Washington
A fisheries technician who quit sports drinks and soda cold turkey and never looked back.
Olney, who is a member of the Yakama tribe, used to be into sugary drinks. One bad can of Sunkist strawberry-lemonade soda changed that permanently seven years ago. “Only drinking water is one less decision I’ve got to make in everyday life,” he says. He’s noticed something else, too: His whole family has quietly cut back on juice and soda since his switch, something they’ve never actually discussed out loud.
‘I eat mostly home- made slop recipes I’ve come up with.’
Sydney Huyge, 25; Phoenix
A finance analyst who almost exclusively consumes a mixture of savory ingredients thrown together in a bowl, texture and technique be damned.
“I personally love feeling like a horse eating out of my trough,” Huyge says. Her favorite combination is basically deconstructed enchiladas — ground beef with potatoes and a tomatillo sauce. Lasagna soup and burger bowls are in regular rotation too. “I love cooking in theory, but it takes so long and I hate doing dishes, so it’s way easier to just throw everything together.”
‘I love making this soup.’
Chayan, 20; Fairfield, Connecticut
A D1 cross-country runner who eats the same soup out of the same oversized bowl every day without fail.
Chayan, who grew up in Colombia and came to the U.S. as an ESL student, has turned the soup — “a traditional Colombian recipe” from his family — into something closer to ritual than meal. It’s become enough of a fixture in his life that last year for his birthday, his family sat down and ate it with him instead of cake. But it isn’t just a cozy reminder of home: “I like knowing exactly what I’m putting into my food instead of eating things from a can or a package.” he says. “The soup gives me a good mix of carbohydrates, protein, vegetables, and other nutrients that help me stay fueled before workouts and recover afterward.”
‘Everything vegan — except leather, bugs, and bivalves.’
Kieran Lyons, 67; Syracuse, New York
A higher ed staffer who’s been vegan for a decade — with three specific, self-negotiated exceptions.
Lyons went vegan for ethical and environmental reasons, but he’s spent the years since “prodding my self-imposed cage for weaknesses,” as he puts it, because he genuinely loves food. Bugs, bivalves, and leather made the cut as loopholes. “It’s a little bit of a weird place to be, because vegans are obviously a fairly strict group of people about this stuff.”
‘There was two full years where it was chicken and carrots all the time.’
Alex Sinclair, 37; Bray, Ireland
A project manager who confined himself to a handful of foods while chasing down a mystery illness.
Sinclair spent 2013 onward dealing with migraines, stomach problems, and dark-red skin patches that no test could explain. An elimination diet, done the hard way, left him with exactly two safe foods and one treat: dark chocolate, no milk. A decade on, things have slowly opened back up: “I actually learned this month I can eat nuts again! Which is a total game changer.”
‘Your diet is an expression of who you are.’
Charlie Sosnick, 29; Brooklyn, New York
A writer and filmmaker who has logged every single bite and sip since May 2023 — and sells the results as a book.
Every year, Sosnick compiles his daily food log (collected in his phone’s Notes app) into a printed volume and lists it on his website for $25 plus shipping. “I wish everyone would keep a food diary,” he says. “We would learn so much about the world and each other.” The project is part of a broader pattern of relentless daily documentation that runs through other corners of his life too, including a six-year New York Times crossword streak. ”I started writing Food Diary as a work of conceptual, uncreative poetry, inspired by Georges Perec and Kenneth Goldsmith,” he says. “I am currently in Paris, and writing down all sorts of gout-inducing food: a specific type of Roquefort cheese, a snifter of Calvados, black pudding, and pig foot Parmentier.”
‘My girlfriend and I eat Chick-fil-A breakfast multiple times a week, usually four to five times.’
Jack, 29; Temple, Texas
An Army veteran, welding technician, and anthropology student who leans on cannabis to manage PTSD from his time in Afghanistan.
“Huge stoner here,” Jack says. Weed replaced the pain and sleeping pills as well as the heavy drinking that came after deployment, and it’s the thing that finally got him off antidepressants. The trade-off is a reliance on fast food early in the day: “Sometimes that’s all I’ll eat aside from dinner.” Jack doesn’t know if it’s “sustainable or a long-term solution,” he says. “But it’s what has worked on me.”
‘I estimate I’ve tripped DMT almost 1,000 times.’
Ross Goodwin, 39; Caspar, California
An artist, creative technologist, and teacher devoted to inhaling the drug.
Goodwin, an early adopter of nicotine vapes back when they were still called “e-cigarettes,” was drawn to DMT for its unpredictability and its brevity — a 20-to-30-minute trip that, unlike most psychedelics, doesn’t eat up an entire day. “It’s like rolling a d20,” he says, referring to the 20-sided dice. “You never quite know what you’re going to see.”
‘I consume so much dried mango that I regularly wipe out my local grocery stores.’
Spencer LaBute, 35; Bayside, Wisconsin
A dried mango convert who didn’t even like the fruit until two years ago — and now can’t stop buying it.
LaBute lives just north of Milwaukee, and by his own account, grocery stores across Bayside, Mequon, Grafton, Brown Deer, and Glendale routinely sell out of dried mango because of him alone. When the local shelves run dry, he drives into Milwaukee proper to restock.
‘My cottonmouth is just really severe and can only be cured by a crisp DP.’
Raphael Balboa, 18; San Diego
A drummer and sound engineering student who drinks six to 10 cans of Dr Pepper a day.
The habit started about a year ago, when a friend tried to hypnotize him to get off weed. Now he needs a fix for a totally different habit.
‘For me, dope is a self-medication, sensory-seeking, making-life-liveable kinda thing.’
Mo Rose, 22; Portland, Oregon
A sex worker and poet who is candid, in detail, about what daily opioid use and methadone maintenance look like from the inside.
Mo Rose doesn’t want sympathy and she doesn’t want to be simplified. She describes her dope use as closer to self-medication than recreation, and credits methadone with stabilizing her life rather than undoing it. She’s survived multiple overdoses and says the toll shows up in small, strange ways now — gaps in memory, moments mid-sentence where her mind goes blank. What she wants people to sit with isn’t the drug use itself but everything around it: a cat named Opium, a downtown apartment, parents who once kicked her out at 18 and have since become, in her words, “incredible harm-reduction baddies.” “Even when I’m in a lower state,” she says, “I am more regulated and a better person than ever before.” ●
Peter Fisher is a photographer based in New York City. He graduated from the University of Colorado’s film studies program in 2014 and teaches a class for the Documentary and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography. He loves photographing road trips with his dog, Waylon. You can find his work in The New Yorker, Vogue, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and The New York Times.
