“From Gut Health to Well-Being: Can an App Truly Know You?”

The Zoe app has entered the wellness landscape with bold promises: personalised dietary insights, optimised gut health, and a tailored approach to nutrition. Many of my patients have asked questions about this new app. My reply has been ‘I don’t know enough to give you an opinion’- until now. In 2024, I signed up to Zoe to help answer your questions and I was intrigued. Does it truly offer what it claims? I explored, with curiosity and honesty, what such a system might reveal and conceal.

Zoe introduces itself as a bridge between technology and the intricate human body. Using continuous glucose monitors and stool analyses, it attempts to decode your unique biological responses to food. The promise of artificial intelligence lies at its heart, interpreting data to offer recommendations that claim to be “personalised.”

However, the body is not static. Every moment is an interplay of countless variables: movement, mood, thoughts, and the ever-changing environment. How can any algorithm account for the living, breathing complexity of you?

The Early Days:

For some, the process of wearing a blood sensor and logging food becomes strangely addictive. Observing how a slice of pizza or a pint of beer affects glucose levels can feel empowering—until patterns emerge that leave one questioning the app’s narrative. The app encourages you to explore foods while wearing your glucose monitor, it assists them to ‘personalise’ your scores.

I did just that, from consuming different proteins, fats and sugars. The biggest spike I received was from eating a banana.

Such findings are curious, but where is the explanation? What does a “low” or “high” score truly signify for your long-term health? From what I witnessed by users were left consulting google, turning personal health into a fragmented puzzle. On the support social group, the consensus appeared that any response from the app’s dietitian was broad, non-specific and possibly an AI response.

Nutrition’s Familiar Lessons

Much of what Zoe advocates feels like an echo from schooldays: eat good quality meat, vegetables, consume fibre, avoid overly processed foods. Sound advice, yes, but hardly revolutionary.

For individuals managing conditions such as Crohn’s disease, the app’s emphasis on fibre may be unsuitable, even harmful. Moreover, the recommendation to consume nuts and seeds for their fibre benefits overlooks their calorific density—leading some to overeat, experience digestive complaints, or even gain weight.

What seems overlooked is the subtle dance between food and psychology. Stress, for instance, places the body in fight-or-flight mode, suppressing digestion and shifting priorities. In such states, simplicity—like fasting or easily digestible sugars—may serve better than a fibre-heavy meal. These distinctions rarely find space within the app’s framework, yet this is regularly spoken about in scientific papers.

A Question of Personalisation

Zoe’s promise of tailored guidance is its greatest selling point, yet much of its advice aligns with standard government dietary guidelines. Foods flagged as “gut suppressors” often turn out to be those that one instinctively avoids (because you suffer with heart burn, stomach aches, reflux after certain foods). One might ask: is the body already wiser than the app?

Even its encouragement of goal setting, while motivational to some, can create a subtle tension within the body (e.g. headaches, anxiety, muscle tension).

How does it feel to set a target, only to fall short? Does trying so hard sometimes leave you feeling uneasy? Should it be this hard.

The Practical Realities

Zoe is not without its hurdles. Its cost can be prohibitive, and the time required to log meals is cumbersome especially for those who favour fresh, unlabelled ingredients. The app doesn’t consider the quality of food.

For all its talk of personalisation, the recommendations often boil down to binary preferences—sugar or fat, fibre or protein. These insights can be helpful but are rarely transformative. Reflecting on my own tastes, even without Zoe, I do not like our very British meal of fish and chips, its high in fat, my body feels heavy with the thought of such a meal and if eaten, I would feel sluggish. The app merely confirmed what my intuition had already revealed.

Your Quiet Internal Wisdom

The truth: the body, your body often knows. Beyond apps, algorithms, and expert advice, your own experience whispers guidance. When you crave something, is it not your body asking for what it needs? When you feel energised or drained after a meal, is that not wisdom speaking?

Over the years of social, entertainment and greed of others brain washed to think of food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, rather than to see it for what it is- fuel.

Zoe’s podcasts may enrich the curious, but no external system can substitute the quiet, instinctual knowledge already within you.

My Final Thought

Health is not a rigid formula, but a fluid relationship between body, mind, and spirit. Whether you embrace Zoe or another approach, pause to listen—truly listen—to yourself. In this, there lies a deeper form of personalisation, one no app can replicate.

And when clarity eludes you, remember: As your personal health advocate and practitioner I will support your health journey, offering insight not from an algorithm, but from years of human understanding.

Book: www.sallymorris-osteomuscularneuro.com