Is the Zoe nutrition test worth it? Or Emperor's new clothes?

Did it not give you greater insight into what was good and not so good for you?

If you got scores of 'Excellent' for gut health and blood fats, fair enough, but otherwise?

There is a lot of misinformation on this thread which is quite sad because people are criticising the Zoe program and not really understanding some of it.

@Ineedaholidaynowplease The point of the blood glucose monitor is not just to see which foods 'spike your BG, but it's more about how quickly your body clears it, and how efficient your pancreas is at returning the BG level to normal.

Spikes, in someone health, with no metabolic disease, are not so much an issue. But if those spikes stay high for a few hours, rather than returning to normal quickly, that can be a sign that you are heading towards insulin resistance (ie metabolic syndrome= diabetes Type 2,)

The program is not aimed at anyone already with Type 1 Diabetes or even type 2 (unless agreed with their specialist.) These people are excluded from buying it.

The fundamental premise is that the gut microbiome is important in so many diseases, because most disease is caused by inflammation. (This includes many autoimmune conditions and allergies.)

There is a LOT of work going on worldwide (not just the UK) with immunologists looking at the microbiome, running trials, and how it affects development of disease incl cancer.

Complete waste of money. I was really annoyed.

Also it's worth saying that there's tons of different things that can cause blood sugar to change not just food. I wouldn't necessarily be cutting out foods because it had spiked me on a couple of occasions- anyone on insulin will tell you the same foods will give you different results, it's not an exact science.

That's one of the useful things about trying a CGM - DH is noticing the effects of stress and exercise not just the foods. The response to exercise was to some extent predictable but not entirely.

It's two weeks of the glucose monitor.

I think you've misread a lot of the info.

You get your own personalised advice. It's not about losing weight, but about improving health.

It's more about your long term health. The kit is a BGM, a poo sample (to show how good or bad your microbiome is,) a blood fat test (to show how efficiently your body clears fat) and the foods that can help improve those (or make them worse.)

(They are also using this 'diet' of 30 plants a week to improve gut health with cancer patients on immunotherapy, world-wide scientific trials, and it can double the chances of successful treatment.)

Also it's worth saying that there's tons of different things that can cause blood sugar to change not just food. I wouldn't necessarily be cutting out foods because it had spiked me on a couple of occasions- anyone on insulin will tell you the same foods will give you different results, it's not an exact science.

It's taken me years to learn what I can tolerate and when - but as above, there really is no need to cut out certain foods because its causing you to spike to 9 mmol or whatever. That's well within the parameters of what my diabetic consultant with over 30 years experience would say is OK.

This. The diet advice is almost the same for everyone and @Waitingfortulips has summarised it perfectly. The true believers hyperfocus on slight differences in scores for different foods but there's little point to doing so.

If you're someone who needs to be walked through how to eat in accordance with waitingfortulip's list, or if you really feel the need to know whether Zoe advises you to have cheese only once or instead twice a week (the kind of slight difference that's not going to make a huge impact overall) AND you have lots of spare cash then maybe go for it. Otherwise there's no need, and you can work to improve your diet yourself.

I think anything that helps people be more healthy is a good thing but I think there is a danger for it to cause anxiety and for ppl to worry unnecessarily. I also think they are making a killing convincing ppl who dont nedd to monitor their blood sugar into thinking they do. For example, blood sugar is meant to spike after eating, going to 11 mmol after eating a pizza doesn't make you at risk of being diabetic.

I'm a type 1 diabetic and wish to God I didn't have to worry about blood sugar and I can't quite understand why ppl who aren't diabetic are worrying so much about what spikes them - maybe it's a novelty for a couple of weeks, quite different depending on CGM to live.

Even with type 1 the consultant advice I have is I should aim to be under 10 mmol 70% of the time therefore spikes are to be expected and even though that means my target is to be over 10 30% of the time, I should be OK. These numbers are obviously way worse than what any non diabetics will see but I'm told if I can achieve that I should minimise risks of complications so I do think there is ppl could unnecessarily worry - you'll know your diabetic when a spike is 25 mmol, even when you've taken insulin but it's slow to react.

If you don't have this horrendous disease, be grateful, eat in moderation but don't be obsessive over going up to 8mmol etc because that's fine.

If you're at risk of T2 obviously you need to be careful but a hba1c test is more important than individual spikes.

The latest podcasts do a roundup of advice, in the vein of @Waitingfortulips ’s post.

I did it. Let me summarise:

eat vegetables.
eat beans
eat seeds
eat nuts
eat fruit
eat extra virgin olive oil
reduce bread/pastas
do not eat UPF
reduce sugar
zoe is seriously conflicted about meat/animal protein in the common way

personalised nutrition is a myth. There are true believers - beware of them. They are not critical thinkers.

I've not RTFT ...
I think for many people it wouldn't be worth doing (at the current price). If you're 'worried well' or just want it as a weight loss method probably don't bother.

However, DH and I signed up before Xmas, him first. He's quite badly prediabetic, has been monitoring his glucose with pinprick tests and urine strips for years as his dm was T2 . For him the CGM (he's bought some more) and scores are very useful tools.
I wanted to do it because my HBa1C was the same as his and I have PCOS which is associated with insulin resistance and my cholesterol is borderline high. It turns out that my glucose response is nothing like as extreme as his.

Going forwards he's extended his membership, I probably won't as if a food is ok for him it'll be ok for me. It's really encouraged us to eat better - in particular discovering (to his surprise) that we both like beans and lentils.

I also think that the overall project is a good idea, to get data and continually update the models based on new info. There may be an issue that people doing Zoë are a biased sample - people who give a shit about their nutrition.

I'm just short of a year in to my Zoe experience and feel like starting my own blog even if it's just to link to on all the millions of Zoe threads that are appearing/returning at the moment!

This time last year I was approx 3 stone heavier (at least, avoiding scales has been one of my favourite things for the last decade), my blood sugar was two points off type two diabetes, high blood pressure, no sleep, anxiety ridden and knackered. I thought I knew how to feed myself healthily but most of what I thought was good for me was wrong (daily quick porridge sachet - might as well have just eaten sugar!). In my life as a chubster I've done WW multiple times and Slimming world (lost 4 stone, gained 6 🤷🏻‍♀️) so I know my faddy weight loss plans!

My testing showed extremely poor blood sugar and blood fat processing abilities as well as a shoddy microbiome. So a year in? I have to follow a much more strict regime than most to make up for my rubbish north eastern genetics, the beetroot and sweet potato I had been eating were NOT the good choices for my body I thought. I eat tonnes of nuts, pulses and much much less meat (so far so mediterrainan) and I am leaner, fitter, way off diabetes in a recent blood test. I sleep well and most of my anxiety is reduced.

The education is very gradual, you don't change things overnight but in small steps and if you are someone like me who has always been the fat friend it's the best thing I could have done for my 50 year old body. If you are already mostly living off a vegan diet and slim then it's probably old hat and no help at all but for me it's a life changer and hopefully a life extender.

Although right now I could do without good old Tim appearing everywhere even I, a proselytising devotee, think he's running the risk of overexposure!

I signed up to it and swiftly cancelled when I realised it's only actually a week of the arm monitor thing and the rest is just diet advice. I like gadgets and data but I don't need diet advice based on one week.

Thanks for the link to the FT article.

😂There's always someone who believes the world is flat.

Happy to enter into a sensible discussion, based on science.😀

@JacketAndJumpet I sort of agree because my scores were all good.
However....one reason I wanted to do it was because of family history. My mum (now very very elderly) has pre-diabetes (she's not remotely overweight), and there is a strong history of heart disease on her side of the family.
I was interested to see my response to fats.
Mine came out as 'Good' (something like 59%) but that was my lowest score. The others were over 80% 'Excellent'.

So what that told me was I need to be a bit careful with saturated fats.

And also keep up the good stuff I do.

It’s bollocks

I’ve done it and found it interesting. For me it wasn’t worth the money as I came back as very good in all categories and my personalised plan is just ordinary healthy eating- lots of fruit and veg, pulses, olive oil, some fish, whole grains - Med diet basically- and I already knew all about that and could have saved my money. No rogue foods to avoid or issues to address.

Perhaps if I’d had a more varied response to the tests then the personalised advice might have made more difference. Can’t complain really- like grumbling you paid for a doctors check up and all was well or paying for a year’s home insurance and not getting burgled 🤷‍♀️

Tim Spector makes the Financial Times....

https://www.ft.com/content/abe98fe9-bf58-461b-aa9a-313ed9a49f82

"The American Diabetes Association (ADA) generally recommends the following target blood sugar levels: Between 80 and 130 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) or 4.4 to 7.2 millimoles per liter (mmol/L) before meals. Less than 180 mg/dL (10.0 mmol/L) two hours after meals."

So you have until 2 hours after the meal to get below 10.0 & then consider yourself still in healthy zone. I think that's what that statement means. Is < 10.0 mmol/L 2 hours after a meal, the threshold that ZoeApp uses?

According to the app, your blood sugar levels should range between 3.9- 7.8 mmol/L throughout the day. "Normal" blood sugar spikes would go from a baseline level of 4.0 - 5.5 mmol/L, "moderate" would be to 7.8 - 11.0 mmol/L and "high" to 11.1 mmol/L and above. So in short, people need to eat in such a way that doesn't spike the blood sugar more than between 6 - 8 mmol/L throughout the day.

I've done it and while I think it has been useful and interesting in some ways, it didn't give the answers I was hoping for.

I was on a very strict diet and exercise plan for a while (only 9 weeks, so manageable). While doing this, I have to admit, I felt amazing! But it wasn't sustainable long term as I had literally cut out everything (no alcohol, no caffine, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, fairly low in fat). I lost loads of weight and was happy with the results. But when I started eating a more normal diet I started feeling tired at times again. I was hoping Zoe would tell me the thing that was causing that. But my sugar processing was very good as was the fat processing. It did tell me I had very low gut biodiversity but the balance overall was good which seemed to be more of their focus.

I did find it useful monitoring my food but I can't be bothered long term. I have made changes to my diet based on feedback though

Both me and dp gave up on it. The tests and the analysis were interesting but my gut biome was good, sugar processing good and fat processing v good. Dp's gut biome was poor and his sugar and fat processing poor. We eat exactly the same meals and tbh the meal suggestions we had were v similar. We didn't really like the recipes so we gave up.

Dp will continue to use a blood glucose monitor sporadically as he is pre diabetes and I think it made him really think about it. But tbh it's because he is obese and the best way for him to address this would be losing weight and Zoe is less about that and more about what you eat.

Thanks for that, wellity.
So... I see that they gave you numbers compared to other ZoeApp users. My question is, where is the threshold that says what is too much blood sugar spike? Maybe everyone who uses ZoeApp is desperately unwell; or maybe they are all in the safe zone. Your blood sugar is supposed to vary in response to what you eat. Or are they trying to argue that everyone should be flat lined all the time in response to everything they eat, ideally?

I've finished mine - and have written two fairly detailed blog posts about.

The first talks about blood glucose experimentation and the second is a bit of an essay about the nature and value of the ZOE trial as a whole.

Hopefully these will be useful to people!