The ZOE Diet Review By Dietitian – Insights, Pros and Cons & Reviews

What is the ZOE diet?

The ZOE programme is a nutrition membership programme based on how your body responds to foods, specifically fats and sugars. They claim to be a personalised nutrition approach. The whole process begins with tests. Every member has to take a home stool test, blood sample and blood glucose monitor (worn for 2 weeks). As a control, they send you standard muffins or cookies to eat on your test days so they can see how your body responds to sugars and fats compared to the rest of the population. Based on your test results ZOE generates a food score list and nutrition recommendations.

ZOE started in 2022 and became a trendy diet approach. As a dietitian, I want to understand what is available out there, so today I want to review and show you the main insights, the advantages and disadvantages and how it compares to a personalised, one-to-one consultation weight loss diet with a dietitian so you can make informed decisions.

How does it work?

As mentioned at the beginning, the first step is to do the tests. Once you have sent the stool and blood samples,  and worn the blood glucose on your arm for 2 weeks, you will receive a ZOE score. This is via an app on your phone. As well as your score you will receive recommendations according to your score. I must mention that ZOE is not market for weight loss.

The app will also include a suggested meal plan and recipes based on foods that your body agrees best. However, the meal plan is broad and does not include precise portion sizes and macronutrient combinations which is very important if you want to lose weight. 

What is the cost of ZOE?

Tests are £299 + membership on a monthly subscription of:

1 month – £59.99 a month

4 month – £39.99 per month

12 months – £24.99 per month

What the ZOE tests show you:

Gut health kit: a stool kit test to collect the sample at home and send it for analysis. It looks at the diversity of gut microbiome, in other words, the good and bad living bacteria in your gut. This information is useful for immunity, mental health and gut issues.

Blood test kit: a kit to collect blood via a finger prick at home and send for analysis. The test looks at how fast your body clears fat from your blood after eating.

Glucose monitor: a round yellow plastic circle glued to the arm for 2 weeks to monitor blood glucose variations. There is a tiny needle under the disc that pricks the skin and allows the app to have instant body responses after food. During this period of monitoring, you need to eat the ZOE’s biscuit provided and log in your food constantly as requested in the app. 

All these tests as useful as everybody is different and everybody responds differently when you eat. The tests are nothing extraordinary as we do offer these tests in our clinic to help personalise the nutrition plan for our clients. 

What are the test cookies on ZOE?

As described above, they send you biscuits to eat to test what they need to gather information to build your nutrition profile. 

According to the website, the cookies were designed by researchers to monitor biological responses. The test cookies are blue to monitor gut transit time. The idea of cookies is to challenge the metabolism with high quantities of fat and sugars over 6 hours. To do so, the ZOE scientists chose cookies and muffins as the best way to pack all the ingredients needed.

Test ZOE biscuits ingredients:

Breakfast Test Cookie 

• White chocolate chips (cocoa butter, cane sugar, tapioca starch, rice syrup solids, rice maltodextrin, organic vanilla and salt) 
• Flour blend (brown rice flour, sweet rice flour, tapioca starch, cornstarch, potato starch, stabilizer (xanthan gum)) 
• Palm oil 
• Brown sugar 
• Chickpea flour 
• Tapioca starch 
• Tapioca syrup 
• Less than 2% of: water, vanilla bean extractives, salt

Allergy and intolerances information:

Do not contain: milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soy

Contain gluten.

Made in a facility – may contain

That handles tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and eggs.

Not suitable for allergies and celiac.

On the day of tests, the users are requested to fast until a specific time this means no food or drink apart from water, black tea or coffee. They need to eat the test biscuit within 15 min, then fast again for 4 hours until lunch. When they eat the test biscuit again. 

This can have implications for those on medication or diabetic.

The ZOE diet is for weight loss?

Although people call it the ZOE diet, the programme itself is not a weight loss programme. The programme is focused on metabolic responses to foods. Researches show that users lose about 4kgs over 3 months with the ZOE programme, whats more, it lacks advice on how weight loss can be sustained in the long run. This is not a lot since if you do a personalised consultation for weight loss, you can expect to lose that in a month with a weight loss dietitian or nutritionist. Users might lose weight because of the changes they make when they discover the bad responses of their bodies to certain foods. It is common for people that start any nutrition programme when they start to make a few changes. 

Another important point that we noticed in our clinic is that one of the best things about personalised nutrition and consultations is accountability. For someone who has been struggling with their weight is extremely important to account for and to have continuous support and monitoring by a designated nutritionist. That is something that ZOE lacks.

What the users of ZOE are saying?

Happy customers mentioned they find it very interesting and useful to learn what foods are better for them so they can make better choices. 

Reviews:

‘It is a fascinating journey from finding out how my body responds to foods, to making new recipes and how to mix foods for full benefit to me. There are no restrictions, which is great if you have a favourite food, just tweaks to make it healthier for your particular needs.’

‘I think Zoe is for anybody wanting to build their knowledge and improve their health.’

‘Program is designed to help you with the best food choices for your metabolism. I do not have good blood sugar or blood fat responses, the app tells me which foods are best for me.’

People also reported:

They didn’t find it personalised, the app is not very user-friendly, the recipes are not accurate, lots of information to take in. The app enables you to scan bar codes of foods to check your score, and some mentioned it much felt like Weight Watchers.

Reviews:

‘The repost is takes the information and makes it so general I felt like what’s the point in spending that much money to be told don’t eat doughnuts and eat apples as much as I want. It’s almost insulting to one’s intelligence.’

“It’s not as personalised as is marketed which is no surprise.”

“But the real issue is the bugs. Several times I’ve had the app lock up when I’ve tried to adjust quantities for a meal – I haven’t figured out why that happens, but it is incredibly frustrating when you’ve been carefully adding the quantities of ingredients as you cook! And the recipes are awfully buggy.”

Then there’s the app, it’s buggy, won’t let you alter tasks/challenges if you’ve incorrectly marked them as complete, uses a chat bot instead of actual support (despite the premium price tag), and presents you with new foods to buy each day instead of a shopping list at the beginning (Because clearly we can all just devote two weeks of our time to the tests).

And again I acknowledge you don’t have to do all the challenges but for something you’re paying half a grand to do you want the value for money that just isn’t delivered by Zoe.

The ZOE diet advantages

• Understand how your body responds to foods
• Make you more aware of what you eat
• No food restrictions
• An app that gives lots of information
• Different membership options

The ZOE diet disadvantages

• Home tests are very time-consuming and time-restricted
• Expensive subscription
• Not all foods are easy to log in to the app, recipes are not accurate
• Rely on technology and apps that can be frustrating if they don’t work
• No direct interaction with a health professional
• Not for weight loss

How is ZOE vs Noom?

ZOE is not marketed as a weight loss programme, but instead a personalised programme about your metabolism response to certain foods. Whereas NOOM is marketed as a weight loss programme, with a different approach to weight loss which is a behavioural approach to remove bad habits to unable to lose weight. Both have no food restrictions and no personalised portion-controlled meal plans. Noom is less invasive as it doesn’t require tests.

How is the ZOE diet compared to a nutritionist for weight loss?

ZOE diet as mentioned is not targeted for weight loss or to treat any condition. ZOE can provide personalised nutrition and recommendations based on the tests you have taken, after that there are no more specific recommendations. On the contrary, you receive lots of information to read and make informed decisions yourself which can be very useful for some. Whereas a consultation with a human professional dietitian or nutritionist can provide personalised nutrition based on tests, plus medical history, eating habits, food preferences, emotional aspects, health conditions, family medical history, body composition and goals. Considers a lot more. Not even to mention that personalised nutrition also can help to tackle weight loss and treat your gut, or weight loss for menopause. Furthermore, as mentioned before, for someone struggling with food, accountability and support are the keys to success and that’s something we know by experience in our nutrition clinic. As a dietitian I also believe in eating real food, and as reviewed in this blog, ZOE has no food restrictions, so even ultra-processed foods are allowed even though you have a health condition and should be restricting certain foods.

I have seen ZOE products in the supermarket, what is it?

ZOE nutrition is growing and now reaching supermarkets.

Zoe now has a range of foods and supplements such as flavoured kefir and a plant-based protein powder sold on Waitrose, Mark&Sencers and Ocado in the UK.

Is ZOE worth it?

Looking at the pros and cons, ZOE has its advantages and has been useful for many users as a tool to educate them about their metabolic responses to foods which is far better than not knowing it. On the other hand, it relies too much on technology and that can be a struggle, especially with bad reviews about the functionality of the app. It is a subscription and once you end the subscription there is no pity time, you lose access to the app immediately, so it can be expensive to maintain. Some people benefit a lot from ZOE but some users found useless. 

As a dietitian, I can say that the product is science-backed up, it is informative and it is personalised to the user’s metabolic response of sugars and fats of foods if everything has been accurate in the test part and data input in the app. On the other hand, compared to a service offered by a dietitian, it is much less personalised and in the long-term can be tiring to rely on an app and also expensive. If you are only looking to understand the food score and how your body responds to chocolate, maybe it is for you. But if you are looking for a personalised nutrition approach, sustainable weight loss, or treatment of a health condition, a one-to-one consultation with a nutritionist or dietitian will for sure bring a lot more value for money in the long run. Contact our team today to arrange your consultation.