ZOE: Personalized Nutrition Reviews

by Cherobics

I was thrilled with the progress I was making until about two weeks ago, when ZOE started slowing down, making it almost unusable, as the lag between searching for a food and having the portion selection pop up was often 5-8 seconds or more, making it confusing and frustrating to use, and often would not properly log food at all.

I reported via the in app chat and was instructed to update my iOS to 15. Well I did that and now I cannot save any meals. I have restarted my phone multiple times and deleted and reinstalled ZOE . It just keeps getting worse. I suspect the makers of ZOE are optimizing for newer phones, which would have been nice to know before committing myself to a several hundred dollar payment on something I wouldn’t be able to use long enough to get real results.

by Xboxgirl

Things are pretty bad when I have to resort to writing a negative review. I decided to do so because I am extremely frustrated with attempts to log daily food a my own meals in ZOE . Calling ZOE glitchy is a kindness. I checked recent reviews before writing this and numerous people are having the same exact issues that I am experiencing. What makes this so upsetting is that on every single negative review there are no comments or updates from customer support responding to the issues. When I called tech support they told me all I a could do was uninstall ZOE then reinstall it. I mentioned that I haven’t done that because I don’t want to lose my data (previously logged meals as well as the many personal meals I created). The tech’s response was, “Oh that’s not an issue, you won’t lose anything.”. Lies. Apple tells you upfront that they will delete your data when you delete an app. I’m frustrated. I’m paying $60 a month for this service and it barely works. The this app program itself is fantastic! The knowledge I’ve gained has been invaluable and has changed my life as well as my relationship with food. Sadly ZOE which is supposed to be a lifeline and the ground work for adherence to this lifestyle is poorly executed on its best day and more often than not nonfunctional. this app support team, you can do better!

by Letmal

Right now, ZOE is lagging to the point of being unusable. Takes 60s after tapping on a food item to get the serving size menu, if it comes up at all. Hope this is fixed soon.

Before this issue - the experiments and tests were really educational. You have to admire how they've distilled a bunch of nutrition data into an "easy" course. It's really revolutionary for me. However, they're only 80% there, with lots of room for refinement. The advice is sometimes contradictory, the lessons occasionally too technical or peppered with questions that aren't always thought through. You can't browse by grocery store (ex. I'm in Trader Joe's what snacks should I buy?). They seem to expect that you'll take hours every week for cooking and shopping which is unrealistic for many of us. No way to easily find 5min low prep meals to squeeze between meetings.

The biggest oversight is that they never address the emotional side of food/eating. They don't acknowledge if you're frustrated with your weight still going up or feel hopelessly discouraged and not sure what to eat. There's no way to tell them 'i'd like to challenge myself today' or 'i need to take it easy'. Long review, but I'd really love to see them keep at it and make this great!

by Januarymo

I find it difficult to use ZOE for its intended purpose of helping me pick meals and foods that give me a high score. Moreover, they don’t have every product in their database so I end up searching for similar items only to discover a lot of variations in scores. It’s so annoying searching for meals because keywords just return a few results instead of all results. I hate the search results more than anything. I don’t feel like ZOE fits with the first half of the this app experience like all the knowledge about timing. ZOE only seems to care that I’m mixing healthy fats and carbs together in the same meal. Which is both obvious (healthy) and non intuitive (mixing fats with carbs). I don’t feel like this program is sustainable because it’s impossible to get a good score since a food with a good score isn’t inherently good by itself, it usually has to be paired with different food that you have to test in ZOE so you’re stuck to ZOE , you can’t make easy decisions on the fly. I think this is intentional so you keep paying for ZOE service since it’s only limited. Also can someone explain why the this app meals have higher scores than other similar foods?

by Xgwncidyen

1) Half the time when I add a food to a meal, it crashes and erases the meal and I have to start over
2) Nutritional data per food item is per 100kcal, not automatically adjusted for my quantity, so I am surprised by how many carbs I have eaten after I input the whole meal and have to do mental math to guess which food item contributed to the excess fat or carbs.
3) Most ethnic food like Indian dosa or a bean burrito is inputted as processed frozen or prepared foods in the database, so if you made it at home, you have to input every single ingredient manually.
4) No way to track gut boosting food so you have no sense of whether you’re eating enough of them to impact your gut bacteria, which is half of your this app report
5) Customer service is the only bright spot

by Captaincupcakeclem

Finding that it takes me about twenty minutes to log anything I’ve eaten, IF I am even able to log it is super frustrating. I have only been able to access my foods and their scores once also. I have been told to delete and reinstall ZOE so that’s where I’m at. I did not have this problem with the test app just the Insights one. Paying for something but not really being able to utilize it properly doesn’t feel right. For the initial testing phase I was touting what a great program this app is. Now, I may not give the same endorsements sadly... deleted and reinstalled. Slightly better for one meal then ridiculously glitchy for the next. 35 minutes to put in lunch is ridiculous!

by St0303

First off, the program is amazing and I have no issues with this app or any of the support given.

ZOE is an entirely different concern. It has been incredibly glitchy over time, had an improvement, but is glitchy again after this last update, specifically with the food log.

I was so glad they added the track your progress visual data. I didn’t understand why you did not have access to the data collected so I was pleased when this was added to ZOE . However, I stopped being asked to give my progress. When I spoke with someone I was told they only track progress for 100 days. I don’t understand why this is the case. I was really glad to see the progress for that one week and now I can’t track anything at all. This is an expensive plan and it would be appreciated to have this throughout the duration of the subscription. The whole purpose is to track change and that is difficult to do. Please add this back to the daily tracking!

by Dos_dedos

The this app program is super insightful, but ZOE is lacking. Besides being a bit glitchy when inputting meals/ingredients the fact that you can’t easily access your lessons is a major pitfall. Not sure why the lessons aren’t made readily available in a library for reference. Instead you have to scroll through each calendar day until you find the lesson your looking for. After taking a break from logging meals I wanted to go back and reread my lessons to find I had to scroll through three months of food logging records until I found what I was looking for and then couldn’t save or favorite for future reference. Ended up screenshotting a bunch of content that is not floating among the 10k photos in my phone’s library. Please fix this and make lessons easily accessible for subscribers. We already paid for this content.

by Moodyfull

The this app program was great up until it was time to use the this app Insights App. ZOE is helpful if all you’re researching is store-bought foods, but the recipe-builder was VERY frustrating to use (get ready to do a lot of mathematical gymnastics.) It was also very difficult to estimate restaurant food. I eventually just gave up in frustration. Even so, it was worth the money I spent on the program. I gained a lot of insight about what to add to my diet to be more healthy and what to avoid (and how to space things out), but since the food journaling was so frustrating, my experience with this app will likely result in more holistic, rather than granular, changes. My guess is the result will be similar. Hopefully as they improve ZOE , it will be an even more valuable experience for others.

by Brittanyditullio

I loved the first part of using this app on the this app Test app. The experiments and the testing was fun and interesting, and I had no issues with ZOE ’s functionality. I found my results helpful and eye-opening. However, I cannot get into the this app Insights app, and that makes me so sad! I think it contains a lot of helpful info, but the logging lags and because of it it takes me longer to log a meal than to eat it. Logging meals from eating out is nearly impossible, and I find it difficult to find accurate similar items to what I ate if it’s from a restaurant. I find myself generally throwing combinations of things at ZOE to see what the scores generally are, but I find it too tedious to use ZOE every day & for every meal as intended.

by Misspudding

ZOE could be so much better. That being said, I give the program 5 stars. The amount of information I’ve gleaned is priceless. I learned I have good blood sugar and fat control but my gut health is abysmal. Unfortunately, ZOE doesn’t work well and some of my recommendations are contrary to what I know about my gut health. I know red meat doesn’t affect me, personally, like it does others. My close related family member who has almost the exact same tolerance and health issues went into remission from a terrible auto immune gut disease by sticking to fatty red meat and veggies. So I wish the founder’s personal feelings about meat and climate change didn’t affect ZOE guidance so much.

by Jshose

The nutrition program is amazing. I have lost 45 lbs over the last year and have never eaten better. ZOE , on the other hand, is unstable, slow and difficult to use. It has improved somewhat over time but still is not great. The company seems more focused on getting more nutritional features in to support their research efforts than they are concerned about user experience. I have been begging for the ability to search my custom recipes. They tell me they will let the developers know but nothing ever happens. So I am left to scroll through over 100 recipes to find the one I want to record. Sigh…

by Caveatemptor82

I’ve found the insights from the program really valuable, but ZOE is incredibly sub-performant. Customer support has been very kind and helpful but this is really an eng issue. ZOE is very laggy and glitchy and sometimes requires multiple attempts or hard -closing it to start over. I’d love to give this a higher rating but they really need to address these issues. I am running the latest iOS and latest this app version, work in UX myself, and am not seeing any performance issues in any other app.

by DallasGuy75214

My experience wasn’t so good. The challenge I had was that I didn’t already have a large number of meals that I could easily plan for and this didn’t help me develop the habits for buying and making healthier meals. So if you already buy good food and meals and just need some insight - this is great. If you are looking for something to develop the habits of regularly buying good food and making healthy meals - I think you might want to look elsewhere. I think they could benefit by applying behavior design research into helping people make long term change.

by Honeybadgerh

I’ve been using this app for awhile now and I can’t help but notice how terrible ZOE performance is. Every click takes multiple seconds to load, sometimes it doesn’t save my food items, and sometimes the items look saved but the calories/score doesn’t change so I have to delete and start the meal over. This has progressively gotten worse over the last couple of months. Please look into it!! I love the product but I get really frustrated using ZOE daily

by Kindred Light

this app customizes a food scoring app to your precise biological needs and gives easy to use instructions and information so you can optimize what you eat to optimize your health and weight. Every time I open ZOE , I learn something new about which ingredients and brands are best for me, how to make super healthy meals and how to balance foods I love with healthy foods... WITHOUT deprivation or limitations - or guilt.

by JJos2

I’m trying to eat healthy, in a way that lowers my risk for diabetes genetic heart issues. this app has been amazing. I started by testing my blood sugar, blood fat and identifying my good and bad gut microbes. The results are a program designed specifically for me. I’ve been amazed. I eat when I’m hungry. I’ve got great energy. My weight has dropped even though I seem to be eating more than I did while on diets. this app is a healthy plan for me and my body.

by Luv.Girl

I’m really impressed with my this app experience so far. My test results were validation in some ways, but I did learn some surprises, and I feel really empowered by truly knowing which foods contribute towards my well-being, and which do not.

ZOE is really well done and easy to navigate. And the chat support is superb. Staff is attentive, responsive, and knowledgeable. I wound up signing up for a year-long membership and I am SO glad I did.

by Becky09l

I joined the this app food plan when I heard the story on the news. I have joined many diets with no improvement. I think it works because you start to feel better before losing weight. My results: more energy, less joint pain, weight loss. Most amazing thing for me my hot flashes are not as intense or frequent.
I have loss 6 pounds in 4 weeks and went off it some days on my vacation. I’m a believer slow weight loss is more advantageous than rapid weight loss.

by Beadblues

I’ve done the full this app experience. Get the test and get your personalized results. And yes, it is worth it. You need them to use ZOE to its fullest. Over four weeks I’ve lost 17 pounds by just changing how I eat. Small tweaks make huge differences. Have been pleasantly surprised by how comprehensive the food listing is. Have always been able to find something comparable when my exact food is not there. Love the ability to enter my own recipes and to see the recipes they have entered.

by Jbernuy

I finished the questionnaire and got a 502 Error that basically reads “The request could not be satisfied.” 🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

by C R S L

Y’all need to fix ZOE - it seemed like such a cool concept but literally it did nothing. Like actually nothing like it asked me 7 questions then went to a loading page and that’s it? Lmk when ZOE works

by Jelicia3012

Was able to make account and fill out intro questions but then it does not allow you to continue

by WowOKyousuck

It stops working about halfway through the questions. Can’t even get to the actual content.

by .B.r.e.e.

Just as everyone else said, it asks you seven questions and then goes to a never-ending loading screen.

by Alirving

Got to question 24/30 and ZOE
Stopped working

by Hyikgkgfm

ZOE : 7 questions, then an eternity of loading.

by Zoe Algart

I understand that ZOE is 17 and up but I suggest that other people such as younger teens need to know how to properly think about their metabolism, I myself really thought that ZOE would be great but couldn’t get pass that age requirement...honestly I’m sorta disappointed

by Jelly Green💚

I understand there are reasons for making ZOE for 17+, but younger teenagers need info about their bodies to. ZOE worked fine for me, unlike some other people, I just wish ZOE was for younger teens because that’s just as important.

by Simplysamsam

I don’t know why others are having issues with ZOE but it’s amazing! I got personalized info about the foods that work best with my body based on the survey. I didn’t have any issues setting it up and ZOE works really well! Highly recommend this! Since it’s a new app maybe it’s just going through some growing pains and is buggy for some people but honestly, I’m happy with it and I’m sure once they work it out ZOE will be big!

by 12ccghh

I really like ZOE. It’s really helpful and insightful. The only thing I wish is that you guys gave daily totals for entire day instead of just meals.

by Vellakl

ZOE works for me, so if you’re considering it you should at least download it and see if it’ll work for you.