ZOE: Personalized Nutrition

Zoe has helped me to lower my bad cholesterol and triglycerides— a lifelong problem. Their recommendations have, in the last 6 months, yielded a marked increase in energy levels for me on a day to day basis, increasing over time, as I’m mostly adherent to the personalized advice. I’m a life long adult vegetarian and had a pretty healthy diet to start with. But there were areas that needed cleaning up and I was unaware how much they could affect my health. The app is glitchy and needs improvement, but overall, this seems like the most balanced approach to an online nutrition program that is out here. The 4 stars is because the app needs work and is expanding. The science based, research based nature of Zoe won me over several other health app type programs which seemed too narrow in scope (some are only micro biome, or only glucose monitoring, or basic lack of underlying scientists actually doing real research to back up claims).

I enjoy the test results and food grading system. I don’t feel like the app is suited to rank certain things- home made fermented foods, etc. They also don’t have reliable ratings for a lot of foods I eat- South Asian, South East Asian, and East Asian foods. I used their recipe import feature for dosa and idli and AI tried to calculate that they both had ‘beef medallion’ in it and I have no idea why. They are both fermented, which you would think might be better for your microbiome, but it has no way to account for that in how you log the recipe. So, it ranks no differently than if the raw ingredients were un-fermented. I’m hopeful that when they have been around longer and have a larger audience (more data points with larger varieties of food) that they will be able to overcome this, but it is frustrating and seems counterproductive. I’ve been enjoying their podcast, their articles, and generally the way they make information understandable for laypeople like me. It has taught me a different approach to nutrition!

I signed up for Zoe and cancelled after a few months. For the better part of a YEAR I have been fighting with them to stop charging me. I have proof on 3 separate occasions of cancellation and they continue to take an auto pay charge out of my credit card. I’ve submitted another message and after 4 days it hasn’t even been opened and read yet. I was really hoping I could support research like this because it’s something I believe in. But now that they have my money I couldn’t mean less to them. Truly unfortunate. I can’t imagine treating customers like that.

Like other posters, the initial process of doing the testing and seeing your results are helpful. The app scores your food and you can get a good sense of how to eat in the first couple of months. In those first couple months, I felt like the app was working okay. Occasional glitches, but nothing major. The longer I have used the app, the more I have been frustrated. New versions have come out, but it seems to be getting worse at logging means rather than better. The response I got from customer service was that they were aware of the logging problems and are working on it. Clearly from these comments, they have been “working on it” for 3 years. The cost to keep the app for the year just isn’t worth it. Use another food tracking app to count your micros and you’ll likely have just as much success - once you know/understand how your blood fat and blood sugar.

Hi, I am learning so much. Thank you. This is very eye opening! Going to change the way I see food and the body working as 1

The program is interesting and helpful! But the app is absolutely slow. Every time I open it I feel like it’s dial up and takes a couple minutes to load the app. The app screen is blank for a couple minutes. Even then after I switch between parts of the app it is slow. I was trying to message a coach and attach a file and it kept freezing up on me. This is quite frustrating when trying to log meals and having to wait like this every time.

New update is a yellow page. Nothing else. Pls fix

This app has greatly altered my lifestyle for the positive. I’m beginning to see my abs. I’m not eating out much. The company is still a startup. Excited to see where they take this thing.

Updated review - the app now seems to function just fine when running the MAC OS verion on my laptop. Just go to the Apple store and download - then open the app from there. The app uses AI to suggest meals and recipes based upon a person's particular test results for blood sugar and fat control as well as gut health. Or you can enter or upload your own recipes. The app is helping me figure out how the foods I am eating are impacting my health. It takes some time to get the hang of all the functions....but the ZOE team is always available to help.

I absolutely love the Zoe program and what the folks are doing, and how it helps me. It can work so much better if we can just get the app to help. I am sure they will do something to improve it. My advise will be make it simpler and more intuitive. I can see what you want to create but it is not working in a seamless fashion and then confuse the user. It needs structure. I would also like to have the app focus on my individual needs and not so much what is prevalent in general. That is after all what Zoe is about. If that is what the app is doing, the user can not be sure of that as there are no clear distinctions made.