An Honest Review of ZOE
The ZOE nutrition app promises to “improve your health with at-home tests, personalized food scores, and expert nutrition advice. Thrive with ZOE's science-backed program.”
But does it actually work?
I’ve been asked for my take on ZOE, by clients and friends (some who have done it themselves). In the spirit of scientific research, I signed up for it myself. Here’s what happened:
Usually the ZOE bundle is £299 but I managed to get it on special in July at £149 (as ZOE were about to launch a new product). Yes, I did pay for it, so am writing this from a very honest and unbiased viewpoint. They made it easy to order from their website, of course they did! Due to the special offer, I waited around a fortnight for the arrival. In the meantime, I did as instructed and installed the ZOE app.
The Big Arrival
Sent by DPD courier, an impressive yellow box arrives at my door. I open it to find four smaller yellow boxes within and an instruction to scan the barcode with my Zoe app. Suddenly the app came to life and asked me when my next free day was. I always take Fridays to do admin and catch up on the week, so I set August 1st as my start date… I then had to fill in my profile, that took about 15 minutes, and wait until the big day.
The morning before my Zoe day, I was granted access to the Zoe community on the app, where everyone seemed to be discussing the blue biscuits. “Interesting” I thought, “it sounds a bit like Alice in Wonderland.” My phone was pinging with Community forum notifications all day. I started to ignore them, maybe the forum (that I don’t remember signing up for) will be useful on Day 1.
The Night Before
The Zoe app instructed me to apply the continual blood glucose sensor and test it. The first of the yellow boxes was opened to reveal a kit. The Zoe app guided me through, the only confusing bit was setting up the profile with LibreLink, the blood sugar monitoring system. I was dreading the application of the sensor, imagining it to have a sharp needle. I did feel something as I put it on to the back of my arm, and added the protective Zoe-branded dressing on. I’m now a walking advert for Zoe.
The positive is that I enjoyed seeing what my blood glucose levels did as I ate my chippy supper (a Thursday treat). Not much actually. I’ve wanted to try a ‘continuous blood glucose monitor’ (CGM) since I saw one on a Type 1 diabetic client. Fascinating stuff to see how the body responds to certain foods.
In the past I’ve experimented with finger prick testing, which was good 15 years ago. CGM really is a useful technological innovation, and one of the big reasons I wanted to try Zoe. So I’m happy and I haven’t even eaten the mythical blue cookies. That’s for tomorrow.
Testing Day
Friday 1 August - I wake excited for test day. What will I discover about myself today? Breakfast is two big white chocolate cookies, a bit like the ones from M & S. I am always hungry in the morning, and the app tells me I have 20 minutes to eat them. Easy. Well, kind of, they’re very fatty (40g of fat), sweet and carby (650 calories and 70 grams carbohydrate), so even though it only takes 8 minutes I feel queasy afterwards. It’s a good thing it’s followed with a 4 hour fast.
I use the time to check in with the community forum where some poor soul had managed to get the blood sugar monitor needle stuck in her arm. My CGM was working fine and showed a sugar peak at 8.4, then a drop back down. After writing loads of this blog, then losing it and having to retype I decide to splash out on a black coffee (water, black tea and coffee is allowed). It’s 2 hours until the next cookies and the CGM is showing 4.3 and ‘going low’. What will a black coffee do? Let’s find out..
30 minutes later
My first revelation is that a plain black coffee doesn’t immediately tank blood sugar levels. I’m steady at 4.3. It does make me feel hungry though, just in time to eat the fabled BLUE COOKIES! I’m imagining Cookie Monster getting excited about cookies, to motivate me to eat the biscuits…
Blue Biscuit time!
The idea of the bloo is to see how long it takes to get to the loo - you log when you do a bloo poo to check your transit time. ‘Transit time’ sounds like a public transport concept, but it’s actually how long it take you to digest and eliminate food.
The blue cookie’s main ingredient is a flour blend, whereas the main ingredient in brekkie biscuits was white chocolate. So it appears lunch is more carb, whereas breakfast was fat.
Here goes for my weirdest lunch ever…
“Best not to think about it” I thought, as I distracted myself with Bluesky and ate blue food. Washed down with three cups of Pure Leith mint tea - after 20 minutes all that’s left are blue crumbs. Blood sugar going up higher than the morning, we’re up to 9.4 and rising…
A Testing Afternoon
After lunch, stool and blood tests were done. Stool test to check gut microbiome, and blood test to monitor response to cookies. The in-app videos were helpful and both tests easily completed. I thought I’d be squeamish about blood test (pictured) but it was actually OK and hardly any blood required. A lot easier than donating blood where they take a pint..
Posted off from the Post Office with DPD, I’m looking forward to the results. I wonder how long they will take?
Logging Food
Sunday 3 August - Part of the Zoe experience is seeing how food affects your blood sugar levels. I’ve just spent the weekend eating and seeing what numbers come up on the LibreLink blood sugar monitoring app. You log meals in the Zoe app, and switch to LibreLink to see the blood sugar levels (in mmol/L). Things that I discovered include:
Fizzy drinks spike my blood sugar like nothing else. I don’t usually drink them but on this particular weekend I had Coca Cola, a Trip CBD drink and IRN Bru, just to see what happened. Weirdly the Trip CBD drink (which is meant to be low sugar) gave me the biggest spike at 12.
Different combinations of food and drink - for instance a fizzy drink with food creates less of a spike. Eating fatty food buffers a spike too.
Exercise uses blood sugar in your muscles, so the number dropped low, but quickly recovered just by sitting down. Weird. But good.
Microwaved Scott’s porridge oats gave me a blood sugar spike. This made me sad, as I like porridge. Mind you, it didn’t go up too high.
Macaroni pie was not a recognised food in the Zoe app. Some would say this double carb combination shouldn’t be a food, but as a vegetarian in Scotland sometimes you eat what you can get… But not consumed regularly!
(* since publishing this blog, Zoe have now listed macaroni pies, so the app is constantly evolving).
Seriously though I like how you can take a photo of your meal and Zoe comes up with a pretty accurate summary of it. Much easier than the old methods of logging a food diary. The barcode scanner is handy too.
My blood sugar drops to low overnight. In the LibreLink app, this comes up as a red screen (see screenshot blow), when some might find alarming. The community forum was full of people worrying that their levels were too low. I guess we’ll find out at the end.
Chained to a smartphone
Tuesday 5 August - It’s easy to become a bit too interested in your own measurements. After all, we’re our own favourite subjects. In the last couple of days I’ve become chained to my smartphone so I don’t lose blood sugar readings. A bluetooth connection transmits blood sugar levels every two minutes from my arm to phone. You can also get a reading by holding the phone to the sensor in your arm.
I usually switch off my phone at night and recharge it in another room, so having it beside the bed was not ideal, but needs must. It’s only for a week.
Sometimes, not often, the app freezes. Overall I find it quite easy to use and enjoyable. It’s a bit odd that I can’t see the nutritional info and macronutrients as I go, however I’m sure all will become clear at the end of the test period.
Today, Tuesday August 5, is the last day I need to log food. However, as I have the CGM to monitor blood sugar, I'‘ll be continuing until at least Thursday. Stay tuned for more updates…
The end (of week 1)…
Thursday 7 August - I’ve been wearing the CGM for a week and have got in the habit of having my smartphone with me all of the time. It’s been interesting and has shown me that when I eat normally, my blood sugar levels stay stable. Fizzy drinks and microwave porridge peaks my blood glucose, but weirdly if I add cinnamon to porridge, it’s less of a spike (thanks Aneta for the tip).
I’m getting a wee bit bored of Zoe now. I like instant feedback, and logging meals feels like a bit of a chore without getting info back. It’s going to be another week and a half until I get the metabolic results, another 4 weeks for the gut biome info.
Tonight I remove the CGM. It will have been exactly a week. The Zoe programme asks you to log at least three days with food and CGM, I did six. My average blood glucose is 4.8mmol/L, which is good. It goes down to low glucose sometimes overnight and early in the morning.
Hello, is anybody out there?
Not a Pink Floyd lyric, but a genuine question to the chatroom. It seems there should have been a Zoe representative on the community forum, but it has become a space for musings and unanswered queries. Thankfully I wasn’t expecting too much support, but I feel for some other users who are dissatisfied. It’s day 8 and I ripped out my CGM last night. After a week of wearing it, the glucose monitor had become itchy and irritating. I figure a week is enough blood glucose data. It was a bit sore to remove, and I had a lump on my arm where it was (now gone down).
I’m continuing to log my food for the next week in the Zoe app, it’s become a habit already. I’ve done all of the lessons and some of the blood sugar challenges, so there’s no more info for me to digest.
Week Two
For the second week I’ve been logging all food and drink. Waiting for the results of both my blood and gut biome tests. Getting impatient with the food diary, it sometimes defaults to 1 gram of whatever you’re logging. I’m looking forward to finding out some results. Stay tuned…
Meh
So I got both results at the end of last week, a fortnight after starting the testing. It was a bit of an anticlimax to be honest. I’m very good at metabolising fats, but rubbish at dealing with sugar. I was suprised my gut biome result was also poor. Apparently I don’t have many microbes. I had assumed I’d be fine as I grow a lot of my own veg, have a dog (who snuggles up to me), eat natural yoghurt and oats with breakfast etc. Zoe was quick to reassure me that they had a solution for me. I’m sure they’ll try to sell me something….
From the end of last week, any meals I logged in the Zoe app, were given a score from 0 to 100. I was planning on having the weekend off doing a food diary (away on holiday), so I was doubly glad to put my smartphone down for a few days.
It’s the start of a new week and I’m not feeling motivated to log back into Zoe. I’ve got admin to catch up with from take a long weekend. Zoe will have to wait.
A week later, so many questions
A busy week, so I gave myself the week off Zoe. In the interim, lots of questions bubbled up:
What is the scale? Everyone is given a number from 0 to 100, presumably ranked.
‘Poor’ seemed a very negative category to be in (I got 40 for blood sugar response). Then looking at PDF, I noticed next category up is ‘good’ (presumably from 50), so I guess I wasn’t far off good. The scale seems a bit arbitrary.
Blood sugar and blood fat results arrived in an easily printable PDF, however the gut biome info is only accessible (and almost impossible to print) in the phone app. Why is this I wonder?
PDF report designed to impress (complete with photos of scientists in white coats) but is actually thin on hard data.
Many of the gut biomes are recently discovered. If this is so, how do they 100% know if they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ bacteria? Is this why the gut biome results are not printable? As they may change?
Even Tim Spector’s pep talk / sales pitch video didn’t get me motivated to get back on Zoe. I wasn’t expecting an epiphany, but the delivery of the results seemed a thinly disguised method of engaging the audience. Call me cynical, but I’m expecting a hard sell any time soon… I’ll get onto it again on Monday. Have been enjoying not being chained to my smartphone but am looking forward to following their food swapping suggestions… Stay tuned!
Here’s the plan
It’s Monday 25th August, over 3 weeks since I started and I’ve got a plan to follow Zoe as closely as possible and log everything for this week. I realise that as Zoe has scored me poorly for sugar control, some of my ‘energy’ foods for fitness (quick release carbs) are ‘bad’. Not too much exercise this week, so a good week to experiment with food.
Conclusion
I’ve spent three weeks logging food with Zoe, and here’s what I think:
It’s good for figuring out what spikes your blood sugars. Useful information to know.
The gut microbiome stuff is interesting, but as it’s an evolving study, how can we be sure of what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bacteria? Having said that, eating ‘live’ good gut food is a good thing to encourage.
Constantly logging food means you’re chained to a smartphone. Not great if you’re trying to reduce screentime.
But you can just do it for a short time, as an audit. In fact, the reason I tried Zoe was from Dr Ranjan Chatterjee recommending trying a continual glucose monitor (CGM).
The Zoe app is OK, there are a few glitches in the food diary, but I’m sure it will evolve the more users it gets. See macaroni pie comment above. You need wi-fi or a fast connection for it to work.
Overall an interesting exercise, eating is personal and there’s no one-size-fits-all answers to nutrition. Not all calories are equal! But we know this at Griffen Fitness.
For the money, we believe PT sessions focussing on movement (that include complimentary nutritional support as part of sessions, including keeping a food diary) are a better investment. Of course we’d say that!
The Zoe app doesn’t cover the affect of exercise on blood sugar, which is partly why I’m ambivalent. They also try to sell you stuff… a lot.
Zoe is an interesting use of AI. It made me think, but I prefer to live more IRL.
