Is Personalization Going Too Far? And how personalised is it?

While the benefits sound promising, there’s a flip side to consider. 

Tracking Glucose can be beneficial and insightful. But many people can fixate on the numbers and start eliminating foods they think are “bad for them”. For more sensitive people or users who have an unhealthy relationship with food, tracking glucose levels after each meal can create food anxiety and stress. Blood glucose can also be affected by other factors, such as lack of sleep, smoking, menstrual cycle, and stress. Of course, food is one of the most significant factors and can undoubtedly help understand the spikes, but it is not the whole picture. 

Instead of glucose monitoring for two weeks, repeated monitoring every three months or so would be more beneficial, but this would become very expensive. 

Understanding your gut health is essential, and we are learning more and more about it. But how personalised gut health can be? Would the same foods increase good bacteria, for some people and increase bad bacteria for others? So, should eating more fermented foods, vegetables, and legumes and reducing ultra-processed food and meat apply to everyone?  What I am saying is that the same foods increase or decrease bad bacteria in our gut, so do we need personalisation? 

Understanding Blood Fats is also great, as the Zoe app can show underlying conditions that can be adjusted with changes in diet and lifestyle. We all can benefit from understanding how quickly our bodies get rid of fat. Still, we all can also benefit from a heart-healthy diet rich in fruit and vegetables, whole grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, and vegetable proteins and reduced saturated fat intake (2).

Main disadvantages of personalised nutrition apps:

1. Risk of Misinterpretation:

Interpreting the results of these tests can be daunting without proper context, medical guidance, or an appropriate understanding of nutrition. There’s a risk of unnecessary worry about normal variations in gut health, blood sugar, and blood fats. 

Weighing and logging the food accurately is very time-consuming and inaccurate and can affect the scores as well. 

2. The Cost Barrier:

Most people who need this kind of personal nutritional guidance cannot afford the Zoe app.  Is personalised nutrition only for those who can afford it, and does this widen the health gap?

3. Psychological Impacts:

For some users, closely monitoring diet and health metrics can lead to obsessive behaviours or anxiety about food and nutrition (5).

4. Not that personalised:

At this point, Zoe needs to be more personalised, as the recommendations are only based on three factors, excluding vitamin deficiency allergies, food intolerances, exercise, and sleep (collaboration with Woop, maybe 🙂 ?).   

Main advantages of personalised nutrition app Zoe: 

1. Many users seem to gain knowledge and understanding about the food they should or should not eat. Logging everything in the app gives you a push to eat healthier food. 
2. Even if it is costly, it is still less expensive than a private nutritionist. Many reviews rave about the support team’s professionalism and help in understanding the data. 
3. Some might not like it, but gamification and making nutrition more fun is are great way to build healthy habits. I like that Zoe is not about calorie counting but more about healthy food choices. 

Conclusion: Is Zoe Health Worth it?

I think the work they do at Zoe will reveal many interesting insights that we haven’t had before, and I am excited about the comprehensive research done in the nutrition field. However, I do see a few red flags, like a lack of transparency, not focusing on the whole picture, and other aspects of lifestyle that could impact some of the results. 

Is Zoe worth it ? Do we need personalised nutrition? Some of us who love tracking numbers and creating plans can benefit. People who are at the beginning of the nutrition journey and have no idea where to start will find getting the tests done and using the app for a few months useful. 

But if you have an unhealthy relationship with food. If you listen to your body and eat healthy already, you might spend £600 and buy some nutritious food or get the blood test done instead. 

As much as AI and algorithms are the future, the more we rely on algorithms to tell us what to eat, the more we stop listening to our bodies. 

What do you think about personalised nutrition? Will you be joining Zoe App?

If you enjoyed reading about the Zoe App, you might also want to read the YUKA APP REVIEW.

If you love using apps for your nutrition and exercise inspiration, you  can also read: 6 COOL HEALTH APPS FOR YOUR WELL-BEING 2024