Zoe review: the most scientific way to change your diet
I did a video a little while back that was looking at the Zoe test, in comparison with some other tests in the market such as a DNA test or a blood test. And what I wanted to do now is show you a bit about the UI and what you get. So you do your three tests, blood sugar, blood fat, and microbiome. And then what you have to do with Zoe is log your food every day. But rather than counting calories, it's actually giving you a score on how good that food or that meal is, for your blood fat, your blood sugar and your gut microbiome.
An almost perfect meal, as calculated by Zoe
I really wanted to show you what an almost perfect dinner looks like. Zoe want you to score over 75, and this particular dinner, scored me 85. I went shopping, especially to get a high-scoring dinner.
I had rocket spinach, kimchi, sunflower seeds, salmon, some cheddar cheese, asparagus, broccoli, and orange pepper, cucumber, olive oil, and a few dates. Everything in here was really excellent across those three measures, apart from the dates. If I click on the dates, these have a score of 30.
Score foods, not counting calories
How does Zoe know how to score foods? In my profile, we can see the full results of what you did at the beginning of Zoe… You do your continuous glucose monitor, you go to the bathroom, and you do your stool test, and then you eat your muffins and you do the blood fat test.
The continuous glucose monitor is getting real time data the whole time. And then the other two tests, blood fat and the stool test have to go to a lab. And then they look at all this stuff, as well as your diet. Then they give you these four scores:
My blood sugar control: Good
My blood fat control: Poor
My microbiome score: Medium
My diet assessment: Good.
Diet assessment good? I hope so because I'm doing Earthy30 - eating 30 different plant based foods a week. And I've been doing this for a while, which should improve my microbiome score over time. So if I click on gut microbiome, we can see that they give you a bit of an understanding. They're very good at educating, and they really tell you the why behind everything they're doing on Zoe.
They also give you a bit of a clue as to the different things that would affect your gut microbiome. So here they say that diet quality, recent antibiotics, activity levels, sleep, where you were born, all of these things have an effect on your gut microbiome.
Exploring food categories with Zoe
So if I “x” out of this one, and go to foods, we can see that I've got a list of proteins that are going to be really good across those three metrics. So lentils, really good, almonds, pinto beans, all beans, in fact, really good, nuts, walnuts, chickpeas…
Let's get to salmon because salmon was actually in that last meal. No impact on blood sugar, no impact on blood fat, and then good for my gut health. This is an example of a food that you should definitely be adding into your diet.
So all in all, like there's so much stuff in here, so much more than I thought I was gonna get. And I guess the real question is, what have I done differently since doing this test?
Changing my eating habits
I've definitely stopped having as much red meat as I used to, because that had a bad effect on my blood fat. And then actually using Zoe in conjunction with my Eight Sleep mattress, which tracks the quality of my sleep, I started noticing that alcohol too close to bedtime and in fatty meals too close to bedtime had a really adverse effect on the quality of my sleep. So Zoe, in conjunction with this sleep tracking has really enlightened me on that one.
I think in general, I've just been cheating a bit less now that I know the impact of some certain foods. Prior to Zoe, I was probably getting Uber Eats twice a week and now I'm not really having any to any.
I've got a new favourite meal with my girlfriend. We have bean chilli that's got four or five different beans in it. And that's really, really excellent for my gut microbiome as a according to Zoe, like if we just remind ourselves that if we go into these beans and legumes, we've got black beans 100, lentils 100, soybeans 100, pinto beans 99, red kidney beans 99, chickpeas 91...
All of these beans are really fantastic for all of those three metrics that we spoke about.
Some other things that have changed: So I was having bread and butter with honey, with a banana and peanut butter and then some sesame seeds on the top that I've now changed to no honey.
Is Zoe worth it?
I think Zoe have really cracked it. Prior to COVID testing, something this comprehensive would have been quite a difficult sell to the public and it still is quite comprehensive and you have to do a lot.
I must admit some days I don't log everything because logging isn't the most exciting of activities. But the amount of value you get from Zoe in terms of understanding the impact on food is truly remarkable.
If you enjoyed this, check out some of the other videos on the channel. There's a couple of other ones about Zoe both live and coming out. So if you'd like to know more about that, give them a go.
