The app is a tool to genuinely better health
You have to join the Zoe programme to get full use out of the app but if you test yourself properly at the start and log your meals then your health will improve. What is health? It means staying away from doctors and hospitals in my humble opinion because “health” often means medication nowadays. 2400 years ago Hippocrates said “Let food be thy medicine….” and this didn’t mean fad or fussy dieting but lifestyle change. Zoe is not about fads either, it’s about positive change.
You have individual measurements that help give INDIVIDUALISED scores to whatever you eat and so you can build meals and snacks that will improve your overall health. My wife a lot of weight without trying and I did (I didn’t think I needed to) and it has had a positive impact on blood sugar and cholesterol.
Zoe says that “no food is off limits” and it is sort of true. Animal meats are strongly impacted and if you want high scoring meals this will push you towards a pescatarian diet. I can’t get enough protein on a vegetarian diet (balancing all other factors) so I need fish and eggs. Technically, pulses have protein but it’s about ⅓ that of fish or animal meat.
Using this app has made a significant positive impact on both mine and my wife’s health. One of the best investments we have made.
You have individual measurements that help give INDIVIDUALISED scores to whatever you eat and so you can build meals and snacks that will improve your overall health. My wife a lot of weight without trying and I did (I didn’t think I needed to) and it has had a positive impact on blood sugar and cholesterol.
Zoe says that “no food is off limits” and it is sort of true. Animal meats are strongly impacted and if you want high scoring meals this will push you towards a pescatarian diet. I can’t get enough protein on a vegetarian diet (balancing all other factors) so I need fish and eggs. Technically, pulses have protein but it’s about ⅓ that of fish or animal meat.
Using this app has made a significant positive impact on both mine and my wife’s health. One of the best investments we have made.
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Disappointed with Timeline.
I really wanted to like Zoe. I had plenty of information in the app that guided me through the testing process and clear instructions on how to ship everything back. Things took a turn when I was notified on the app that my blood work was damaged in shipment. Zoe’s team showed little remorse about the fact that now my test would be significantly delayed. I had to wait for them to resend an entire test kit and I’m still waiting on confirmation of what they can do to refund my membership to make it right. I found it very disappointing that a test that already takes four to six weeks to process I was forced to do it again and even though it was a shipment issue and not the part of the company, they really would not take accountability and didn’t really seem to want to keep me as a customer. On top of that, I still have not gotten the results from the sections of my lab that were not damaged and it’s been well over six weeks. Hopefully I can update this review of customer service can provide me a solution but right now it isn’t looking good. I would invest your money in something that will give you more timely results.
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Love the program, hate the app
Well, the above says it all for me. The food logging is terrible, but that's not so huge for me. I find the app's microscopic display almost unusable, and then they have recipes I am very unlikely to use, because - well, number one, the microscopic display, but also, I have found no way to print a recipe, which would make me forgive the small display for that part of it, anyway. I don't even have the most recent version of my food lists in a form I can print to use in the grocery store. I'm not a person who walks around staring at my phone, so that wouldn't be a good suggestion as a potential remedy. I like seeing a whole list, all at one time. Well, whatever. I paid way too much for the app, if that were all there is to it. I do like the intent of this science-based nutrition. I just wish Zoe had provided an app that would make it reasonably easy to do. I wish I could print the lists, recipes, etc., if they insist on using technology from 2005. Please hire some younger programmers or something. (I can say that. I'm a senior citizen.)
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Mediocre with right ambitions
Buggy, hard to use, good concept but expensive for what you get. App isn’t that great tbh. The intention is good, and I do think genuine. It shows which foods are good and bad and has some good examples, but you need to dig yourself ti find more.
The app however, is slow in responding to any command, even typing. You end up clicking the wrong rubric because in the time you click what you want it finishes loading something else and you get spat out somewhere else. It’s really frustrating and makes it unusable for its purpose of logging food. That needs to be so much quicker. My fitness pal is miles ahead , it would be better using that somehow. The AI recipe function pretty good though on the limited times I’ve used it. That said the response to food searches is not great. Loads of nonsense and brands come back before something simple like risotto rice. This happens with everything you search. User interface really clunky and hard to navigate. Hard to look at, not appealing design. Feels really messy. 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.
The app however, is slow in responding to any command, even typing. You end up clicking the wrong rubric because in the time you click what you want it finishes loading something else and you get spat out somewhere else. It’s really frustrating and makes it unusable for its purpose of logging food. That needs to be so much quicker. My fitness pal is miles ahead , it would be better using that somehow. The AI recipe function pretty good though on the limited times I’ve used it. That said the response to food searches is not great. Loads of nonsense and brands come back before something simple like risotto rice. This happens with everything you search. User interface really clunky and hard to navigate. Hard to look at, not appealing design. Feels really messy. 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.
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Mixed review of the app and lesson plan
The app itself is fine. I appreciate text analysis of recipes, though it's still in Beta and doesn't always work. However, there's no summary of what you've eaten, no indication of calories or macronutrients. If I also wanted to keep track of those things, I think Id need to log my meals a second time in another app. The lessons delivered through the app are nothing special. Worse in my opinion that Noom's. Theres a slow trickle of information, with nuggets here and there. They have you complete two long surveys at the start of the program but it's clear they don't incorporate that information to set the plan and I think it's made me worse-off health wise. I'm waiting for my results, Im told this is where the program shines but it takes over a month for the results to be ready. I don't know if I will stick with the lessons until then. Customer service and messages in the app are terrible. It takes days sometimes to get a response. One of my messages was sent last week and hasn't yet been "seen."
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Mixed review of the app and lesson plan
The app itself is fine. I appreciate text analysis of recipes, though it's still in Beta and doesn't always work. However, there's no summary of what you've eaten, no indication of calories or macronutrients. If I also wanted to keep track of those things, I think Id need to log my meals a second time in another app. The lessons delivered through the app are nothing special. Worse in my opinion that Noom's. Theres a slow trickle of information, with nuggets here and there. They have you complete two long surveys at the start of the program but it's clear they don't incorporate that information to set the plan and I think it's made me worse-off health wise. I'm waiting for my results, Im told this is where the program shines but it takes over a month for the results to be ready. I don't know if I will stick with the lessons until then. Customer service and messages in the app are terrible. It takes days sometimes to get a response. One of my messages was sent last week and hasn't yet been "seen."
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Game changer
Zoe brought a combination of psychology, current scientific information and nutrition advice in a way that made sense to me and was supportive in every way. I feel better since making small. Steady changes at my own pace. This app and the Zoe approach has made an incredible difference for me.
I feel empowered in helping with the citizen research and helping produce evidence based help and advice for people like me who have complex relationship with food.
I feel so passionate about this product. Heathy eating is a journey and I’ve found it can be fun - I love the Instagram feed, the Facebook group and the app itself I keep coming back to learn more! Absolutely a game changer for someone like me who has a lot of weight that I want to lose and needs a wholistic end to end support guidance system. Thank you Jonathan, Tim and Sarah you are all amazing as is ALL your staff who support this app and progress Zoe
I feel empowered in helping with the citizen research and helping produce evidence based help and advice for people like me who have complex relationship with food.
I feel so passionate about this product. Heathy eating is a journey and I’ve found it can be fun - I love the Instagram feed, the Facebook group and the app itself I keep coming back to learn more! Absolutely a game changer for someone like me who has a lot of weight that I want to lose and needs a wholistic end to end support guidance system. Thank you Jonathan, Tim and Sarah you are all amazing as is ALL your staff who support this app and progress Zoe
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Intriguing concept, non existent support
On paper the ideas sound good, measure your blood glucose in response to foods. However the execution (like almost all health tech startups, just look at theranos) is seriously flawed.
Just for starters the accuracy of the Libre monitor patch is not great, even for actual diabetics. This is also an actual needle in your arm for two weeks, this isn’t mentioned anywhere on the adverts if you’re at all needle phobic.
Then there’s the tests, despite saying it only needs a day, in reality you need to set aside a decent chunk of time to get all the foods it wants you to test over the two week test period if you want to get decent value for the large amount of money they charge.
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.
Just for starters the accuracy of the Libre monitor patch is not great, even for actual diabetics. This is also an actual needle in your arm for two weeks, this isn’t mentioned anywhere on the adverts if you’re at all needle phobic.
Then there’s the tests, despite saying it only needs a day, in reality you need to set aside a decent chunk of time to get all the foods it wants you to test over the two week test period if you want to get decent value for the large amount of money they charge.
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.
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I want to resubscribe but I can’t
I love what the folks at Zoe are doing. The podcast is awesome and I’m totally on board. I completed the program last year but then really struggled with the App. Zoe is very much in favour of getting away from UPF’s. But adding UPF’s to the app is really easy - just scan the barcode. If like me, you cook all your food from scratch including a bunch of homemade fermentation products, as recommended by Zoe, then the process of adding is very laborious. Sure, you can batch cook and then add the recipe, which makes it easy the second time you cook, but this goes against the very idea of eating a large verity of different fruit, veg, nuts, seeds. I eat the seasons, including as much variety as I can. I don’t want to spend more time logging food than eating it, which is what happened. So I gave up on the app and unsubscribed.
Since then, two of my close family have signed up and a third is going to give it a go soon. This has reenergised me. So, now I want to resubscribe. I’ve hit the resubscribe button in the app every day for a week. Nothing. No response. No email. No message from support. Do you want my money? I don’t know how else to contact the team. There’s no contact information on the join Zoe website.
Since then, two of my close family have signed up and a third is going to give it a go soon. This has reenergised me. So, now I want to resubscribe. I’ve hit the resubscribe button in the app every day for a week. Nothing. No response. No email. No message from support. Do you want my money? I don’t know how else to contact the team. There’s no contact information on the join Zoe website.
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Excellent - I would highly recommend it!
Look at the website and check out the business end and the claims. The course is highly technical and not the easiest to follow but it’s covering a hugely complex subject - your personal biology - in as user-friendly a way as possible. There’s usually someone to talk to for any clarification you need and all the recommendations are claimed to be specific to you. I’m not sure this means that there are health specialists constantly discussing you but even if the results are based up to a point on algorithms, they are very helpful for improving your diet and ‘lifestyle’. That word ‘lifestyle’ brings me to my only reservation - although Zoe do their best to make it as relevant to UK customers, the general flavour of the app. is American - cilantro for coriander for instance, and the tone can be a bit wearing in its upbeat bounce. Support after diagnosis is very good (so far - I’m a month in) and I feel virtuously healthy too. But bear in mind - it’s a big commitment!
Just adding - my initial goal was to improve my micro biome - which turned out to be excellent anyway! But you can’t change your goal at the moment - this needs addressing
Just adding - my initial goal was to improve my micro biome - which turned out to be excellent anyway! But you can’t change your goal at the moment - this needs addressing
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