The ZOE app was just put to the test. Here are the results.
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- Zoe is an app offering a personalized diet. It was just tested in a clinical trial. The results are fascinating.
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Facebook: / drgilcarvalho
Twitter: / nutritionmades3
Animations: Even Topland @toplandmedia
References:
the trial:
www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
more Zoe info:
zoe.com/faqs/us
Disclaimer: The contents of this video are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, nor to replace medical care. The information presented herein is accurate and conforms to the available scientific evidence to the best of the author's knowledge as of the time of posting. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions regarding any medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of information contained in Nutrition Made Simple!.
#NutritionMadeSimple #GilCarvalho
0:00 Zoe
1:36 New Trial
3:32 The Zoe program
5:41 Calories
6:46 What the trial means
8:00 A better design
9:12 Funding
9:54 Is Zoe worth it?
The next trial should be half the people watch 1 Nutrition Made Simple video per day for free and half do Zoe for $650 a year.
🤣
💯
Control group 1x a week email:
'Yo, you good? Cool.'
Fr-why not consume non-refined foods only when hungry, eat to satiety and have an anaerobic and aerobic exercise regimen? Don't weigh yourself and count calories. That creates anxiety. Just ensure you always fit in the same clothes at your ideal weight. Easy-peasy.
😆
Funny joke, but this is exactly what a control group would have been if the purpose was to compare the Zoe diet to no intervention. The crazy thing about this trial is that they're claiming to be a more advanced diet than known healthy diets, but they didn't bother to test against a known healthy diet.
bruh
I am grateful for people with high integrity like you. The more I see how everyone is trying to take advantage of unhealthy people, the more I get motivated to stay healthy.
My wife paid for me and her to do the 30 day Zoe 'testing' and this is what I thought about it (just my opinion, nothing more):
CGM - really interesting to log the blood sugar and run the testing to see how I responded. It's nothing I couldn't do without buying one myself though, so worth doing, but not necessarily through Zoe.
Blood fat test - pointless. It's just a blood sample on a test strip you send off. It's done after eating a specific muffin they send you (from memory) and checks how your body processes far. You only do it once, so don't get to see if your changes are doing anything, and to be honest, it's just providing information you can't do much about. The information it gave wasn't any better than simply going to get a cholesterol test.
Microbiome - send off a stool sample and they come back with the 'good' and 'bad' bacteria you have. Again, it's only once so you can't see any improvements, and they simply state that to change it for the better you should eat more unprocessed food, fermented veg, live yogurt etc etc - nothing I didn't know already.
Challenges - some of the challenges where you eat certain foods and watch the blood spikes and how combining foods and changing composition (e.g. adding fats can slow down release) were interesting, but again, the information is already out there.
Overall - for someone like me who is already interested in the topics and watches channels like this, it's probably not going to give anything of value. If interested, get a CGM yourself and experiment, watching the spikes and how you can impact them with what and when you eat. I'd say that was the best part of it. Outside of that save your money and do your homework yourself. For less than the cost of this test kit, you could get a CGM and cholesterol home test kit that will be better in the long run.
For someone who knows nothing about healthy eating and needs it to motivate them into getting educated and inspired (and has the money) it's probably not bad. I wouldn't continue past the 30 days as I feel it's expensive for what it is, but it can be informative for those needing that first push in the right direction. It won't work miracles to those that aren't motivated enough to keep up a healthy lifestyle of course though.
Thanks for your detailed review !
Interesting. Thanks for the testimony.
Totally agree. I did it for 3 months. The CGM was interesting. Not everything I thought would spike my blood sugars did, others were really surprising fir the wrong reason.
Tailoring your diet doesn't really work, at least for me. Barley us better than rice, but I'm not going to swap my rice. I like what I like and I'm not eating what I dont!
I think Zoe is trying to do something really new (personalized nutrition), and the people working behind it are legit, actual scientists. They are not there yet, or at least it is not clear if they are, but their program certainly helps people who are lost. In any case, they are in the right direction, I honestly hope they keep improving.
I did Zoe for 6 months. It wasn't bad but I have become increasingly sceptical of the 'personalisation' element, given that everyone on Zoe appears to be eating similar things - Mediterranean diet basically. Even though we all got different scores for different foods it would be like I would get 74 and my friend would score 76 - minimal differences. Also there are many anomalies in the app: for example, I went vegan and found that soy yoghurt was scored worse than dairy yoghurt, despite considerable research evidence that dairy may present health risks and the fact that I'm lactose intolerant! Zoe ignores food allergies and intolerances eg almonds are healthy, scoring highly on Zoe, which is no good if you're allergic to them! I eventually gave up as my vegan diet consistently scored lower, in contradiction of health research, including research done by scientists who work for Zoe!
I am vegan and no sugar soya yoghurt scored in the high 80s for me and dairy yoghurt in the low 60s
Meant to add that in fact all my vegan foods scored higher than dairy, meat and eggs, and almost all the fish.
I also did Zoe for 30 days and, when asked by friends if they should do it, I would not recommend paying over £300 for the pleasure. The personalisation is not very personal - yes, it's based on your blood results but all the things they recommended aggravated my migraines (mostly the fermented stuff) and when I asked for advice from the coaches they responded with nothing more helpful than don't eat that stuff then, no suggestions of alternatives!
They "personal" responses on the app were patronising and not at all responsive to what you had answered e.g. when I got bored of answering I would put just a punctuation mark instead of words and it would respond with something like "That's great! You're doing really well!"!
They said I had a good fat clearance but the diet sent my cholesterol levels up alarmingly. They said I had poor glucose tolerance (my HbA1c done by my doctor is fine).
interesting, the fact that the app and/or the "counselors" would ignore allergies is unbelievable… thanks for sharing
I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on how a study could have been better. The idea of the control group thinking they're getting personalized advice via a fake Zoe app is a really good one.
My opinion of Zoe changed radically when I found out how much they want for it.
Yeah... but try to hire ditetian specialist on your own and make lab tests :). Those things do cost. I use for free knowledge from the videos they publish regulary as Zoe channel is my favourite place together with Nutrition Made Simple. I have lost 26 kg in 11 months and moved from very obese to just slightly overweight completely for free and also greatly improved quality of my sleep. Their advices played extremely important role in that success. You do not have to take part in the program. The advice they gave for free in the last years is worth much much more if you apply it.
I am a nurse with a PhD in clinical nutrition. I did the Zoe program.
Due to my background I already had a good diet based on our current science (Mediterranean pattern).
Zoe tested my blood and microbiome and made recommendations.... But I was already doing all of the things they recommended.
The fancy testing did not improve my diet or health more than following a healthy diet.
I think it's the support. 🤔
I was following a plant based whole foods diet prior to beginning Zoe, but did not have the variety that the program newly guided me to use. I was well informed by the challenges, including food intake order, which helped with postmenopausal satiety difficulties. I expanded my use of seeds and nuts that I'd previously been coached (by my Cleveland Clinic nutrition coach) to use sparingly and disregarded calorie counts (which were a strict component of the Cleveland Clinic program) then becoming astonished when my waist measurement shrunk and my LDL-C and Triglycerides fell solidly into targeted range. I used the app for tracking/intake entry for food scoring, but more for grocery shopping. I only really used the online coach for technical questions--much less than my contact with my Cleveland Clinic advisor. Weight shift has been slower, but I felt better by far (reduction in migraines, for example, and more exercise tolerance) with lower BP and other labs as mentioned.
A year after I started with Zoe, my husband did too with significant improvement in his HTN control and lipid panel results. So maybe Zoe is for poor schmoes like us who need the testing to help us understand how our bodies react to what we put in our mouths. The Zoe information post testing changed my relationship with food, and I certainly think it is worth the money.
I wouldn’t discount it any more than all the other “diet” programs. If it helps you get there - then great. However, after my 3 year, and still going, program of mindfulness, nutrition, and basic exercise, I am convinced that for most of us obese people we can do all of this by simply sticking to mindfulness, nutrition, and basic exercise. Yes, I am repeating myself for a very good reason. Lost 79 lbs, 6 inches on waist and feel young again at 60+.
I tried them all, and the only sustainable one with the most impact was mindfulness, nutrition, and basic exercise - 100% free! Believe in yourself.
I think this focus community can help. Like fitness or weight loss groups. TBF these people are still alone at home in times of stress or cravings, so they do need to be mindful. Also spending $60 a month kind of an incentive too. I started this year at 98Kg , mostly all over baby fat - ie my hip to waist was a 1:1 ratio - I did already eat pretty well ( lots of veggies , little ultra processed etc ) . But now with an excellent diet, resistance training , cardio I'm down to 88kg hip/waist ratio of .85 . BMI says I still overweight. but have gained muscle mass and I have a wide build ( rugby player when younger ) . So probably only need to drop another 1 or 2 kg to keep some protective fat.
To your point I think for most there are easy gains, but a few times in my week I do need determination. eg I don't eat after 8pm. But if I say have a lentil curry with lots and lots of non-tuber/carb veggies , you feel full at the time of the meal due to bulk, but at 8pm your body is saying had only the olive oil and lentils had any real calories.
What I will say if they follow you, over time it gets easier. Smaller amounts/portions are just right .
Anyway I bake muffins for family - not unhealthy
1 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup wheat bran ( very high insoluble fiber ,gives the dominant flavour )
1 tsp baking soda , 1 tsp baking powder mix dry ingredients
1/4 tsp salt
wet ingredients
2 extra ripe mashed bananas
2 eggs
1/3 light oil
1/2 even more , does not seem to hurt ( increases moisture ) see below
here's the kicker you can mix in lots of other things
eg 1/2 cup unsweetened apple puree ( I just make some from cheap apples )
1/2 cup maybe a bit more of roasted pumpkin ( can add cinnamon /nutmeg /ginger if want, same as vanilla for others )
or fine grated carrots , kiwi fruit pulp , I do feijoas here in NZ as have lots
Imagine unsweeten can peaches or pears ( or pear puree ) works as well
Yet to try berry pulp or mango pulp - assume no reason why won't work
Could probably double up on banana ( yet to try )
Can freeze them
No extra sugar than in fruit , no saturated fat except some in egg or good fat in walnuts etc if added
As a savoury snack if you don't want to munch celery/carrot sticks all the time
I can get a huge container or cooked dry chickpeas at an Indian store , flavoured only in tumeric ( no salt ) low calories and healthy for the amount you just need to eat
Right there with you. I lost 40 pounds doing exactly what you’re doing and have kept it off for almost 10 years by continuing to do exactly what you’re doing. What people forget is you have to continue with mindfulness, nutrition and basic exercise in order to maintain the weight loss. You have to change your life to change your life. Thanks for the excellent comment.
I think there is a lot of solid info on the Zoe youtube channel .. but to be honest was never aware of their business model and the cost is prohibitive.. Nutrition Made Simple is the gold standard when it come to unbiased reliable information ... Thanks Gil...
Please keep up with your mission, to keep sanity alive! Society needs this so much!
Thank you!!
My previous employer was involved in a clinical trial (I don’t have the reference) on chronic alcohol and drug abuse. Relapse rate after rehab is something like 90% after 12 months. They did a study with telemedicine and smart devices which enabled tracking of activity and basic reading combined with strong supervision and support done remotely and with self help networking (like it’s 11am, you still in bed, want a chat with someone?). There were multiple groups and controls, a complex experimental design. Only 30% relapse after 12 months. Much of it down to the close support. So monitoring and support are principle components and need to be controlled. Incidentally, I don’t know why the trial didn’t have a larger impact on healthcare. It was low cost compared to relapse and rehab. If anyone does want the reference, I could probably find it.
(I think you may have meant relapse and not remission?)
Their methods of supporting patients and catching them in vulnerable moments sound really interesting.
Man you do a great job! Stay grounded and remain as our trusted source!
Fact of the day: There are currently 17,000 centenarians alive in Spain. Four out of every five centenarians are women. Specifically, the confluence of the provinces of Pontevedra, Ourense and Lugo (Galicia) has the highest concentration of people over 100 years of age in Spain and is a candidate to be among the longest-lived areas of the planet. In the village of Riello (León), with only 600 inhabitants, there are up to five people born before 1924; in Rábano de Aliste (Zamora), with 320 inhabitants, there are three; in Cabeza del Caballo (Salamanca), with 248 inhabitants, there are another three. Right now, the oldest person on the planet is the Catalan María Branyas, who turned 117 in March in a nursing home in Olot (Girona), but the current ranking of super centenarians, managed by the Gerontology Research Group, shows flags from all over the world. All of them are women.
I think ww2 would've definitely impacted the relative abundance of spain's centenarians; considering that spain wasn't much involved in ww2 ; It collaborated with the nazi's on a very superficial level and played both sides very little. Really not a fair comparison; although epidemiological studies rarely are fair..
In some places, i.e. like Poland, it would be hard to find do many so old people, due to wars I and II as well as decades behind iron curtain...
Gil please release a book, you are literally the best, most trustworthy and factual based Nutrition UA-camr there is.
For those lost in the weeds who need detailed guidance, this app is probably quite beneficial.
"hey chat gpt how can I lose weight?"
"put down the donut and go for a walk"
It's been common sense for hundreds of years that going for a walk stimulates appetite. Have chat gpt make you a meal plan and prepare your sensible meal to be ready for when you return from your walk
So, coach providing feedback, encouragement and guidance is better than just receiving advice... Mind blowing! :) Same with intense psychotherapy vs. waitlist / booklet.
Wow. Your proposed Sham personalization group blew my mind. And I was wondering how to do an RCT on the effectiveness of an app. Great Video as always! My favourite channel.
zoe's method of overcomplicating the weight loss process really fucked me up when i started losing weight. i had food aversions and started eating stuff i don't even like such as tempe lol, i was spending 2x as much on organic food because tim spector said it's more optimal for health. it was some of the first nutrition related content i found and it convinced me that being healthy takes obsession and extreme precision
Love the sound upgrade, much easier on my ears. Keep doing the great work 👏
Love the channel!
As usual - great review! Thank you for your service to all of us!
I always say, all the info and inspiration you'll ever need is already on youtube for free.
Thanks, great video! Research criticism is valid (it doesn't provide a lot of "research value"), but some people make fun of this trial, forgetting that this app can actually help some people who are lost, but can afford it.
It’s always worth listening to your intelligent analysis.
Thank you
Good thing for Zoe that Jonathan Wolf isn't a personal coach. Participants wouldn't be able to answer any questions without him interrupting them and the participants would fall asleep by the time he is finished with all his dragged out woooorrrddddss.
As a nutritionist, he's a brilliant physicist. It's interesting how many times I heard him absolutely amazed at something that should be basic knowledge for someone who is involved in a nutrition organization. For the longest time, I thought he was just a journalist they hired to do the interviews, but then I looked up his CV and was surprised that he actually had a degree in physics. It just floored me that someone with a science background wouldn't brush up on the field a company he actually co-founded is involved in.
Excellent insights as usual .
Great vid 👌
I agree this message…the tailored diet etc is a USP rather than anything else until proven.
The public faces you see in Zoe are all dedicated professionals. Zoe has many free online videos and interviews which are all very helpful in pointing yourself in a healthy direction, and challenging the decades old government dietary recommendations which, frankly, don't make sense anymore. I do not know if the Zoe programme that you pay for is worth it or not, but I'm just saying that the free advice and information they offer is great and helpful.
A study studies what it aims to study. This study aims to show that the Zoe method is better than what is given by default. It aims to show a positive difference with what people are likely to get. The control group got more attention than what anyone is likely to get. It shows a positive difference vindicating the personal approach provided by Zoe.
When you compare it to a sham personal approach, you do not get what Zoe wanted to find out. When you consider the Zoe app expensive, maybe. However it is not obvious what the operational cost were at the time compare to now that the organisation has been ramped up. Given the steady flow of podcasts where they seek to both inform and learn how to improve their operation, it is probably as interesting to learn how Zoe 2022 compares to Zoe 2024.
The trial validated the Zoe program. It doesn't answer the question of "why" it works, but for Zoe's purposes, for now, it did what it was intended to do.
Superb analysis. Thank you. As with the criticisms surrounding a very well-known YT vegan-camp doctor, effect size and overstatement really matter as well. If having a perfectly tailored diet for my personal biology, scientifically substantiated, barely reaches statistical significance in its impacts, or even fails to in several major metrics, is that worth all the hassle and money to incorporate it compared to just eating a mostly whole-foods, plant-based, balanced diet and being very active? For most people like me, I'm guessing the answer would be that it is not. I don't live to eat, champion my diet and its guru, or care to navel-gaze at the results with others in the fanatics club, as much as social media promotes that sort of thing across many areas of life.
Another highly informative video.
great analysis-from top to bottom! it's not quite the sham-because the support (community/personal/etc.) is the real benefit; as you pointed out. and if you feel better during/after adhering to the program almost no one would count that as a loss-except if the price was too high-and they clearly understand that and have priced it reasonably to avoid that issue. it really seems no different that Noom, Weight Watchers, or countless others that came before and will come after. i do wonder about how direct their genomic claims are-didn't 23andMe face and lose legal issues for their "genetic science" claims… thanks for sharing!
That's probably one of the first videos from Gil I'm a bit disappointed about. The study supports a benefit in using ZOE vs. not using it and it would have been a lot more relevant and interesting to discuss the actual differences in the achieved benefits so one could consider if these would be worth $650 or not. Anyway, you're still a rock star!
CONFIRMED! There is a correlation between close personal hand holding on a weekly basis and some health improvement, compared to throwing a couple of pdfs at someone and then ignoring them.
How can we be sure those emails from their coach isn't a.i. generated?
Or not even that, just the same general message for everyone, every week, like how @Physionic suggested.
I did the 30 day initial test, and pretty much all the 'advice' is generic pre-written excerpts. In fairness this is the initial trial that everyone gets, so is aimed at simply educating those without much knowledge of nutrition. Anyone who's followed channels such as this for a while will almost certainly gain no benefit as the advice is quite a basic level just to get people started.
While I see the problem with industry funded studies I wonder if the critics of these studies would be willing to chip in and help pay for them so industry didn’t have too.🤔
Taxpayer funded research exists, so they already are chipping in, aren't they? I'm sure at least some of them would be happy to see more of their taxes go to fund research.
I'm suddenly curious about the randomized controlled trial of subscribing your channel...
I wouldn't be surprised if statistically significant positive health outcomes could be observed by the end of the trial.
But the study would require a 'sham' version of Gil... perhaps Dr Berg? 🙃
@@johncrocker3872 This is unethical, cant do it
I had very similar thoughts after watching their hour-long presentation of the results. Whether the control group was relevant or not depends on which question you’re asking. But even so, the results sounded pretty modest? They didn’t really give numbers. And the Zoe users put a ton of time, effort and money into it, so it’s hard to say that for sure it’s worth it yet compared to just learning a little more about diet and trying slightly harder on your own. Still, they get a thumbs up for at least doing a peer-reviewed study at all. And I do agree with the premise that eventually nutrition can and should be personalized, but I’m not sure if we’re there yet.
Listen my friend, the way almost ALL people eat means any, absolutely ANY move towards a less toxic eating method HAS to show improvements. That's how sick commercial food makes us
I can agree with the future trial design. The random or universal diet would be phenomenal to compare to Zoe.
Calorie reduction. Not starvation. Calorie reduction. Move. Burn more calories. People lose weight, their numbers improve.
I agree, losing weight isn't more complicated than that.
Just the fact that you wear a CGM for two weeks and see what happens to your blood glucose levels when you eat various foods is enough to change eating behaviours - you don’t need the whole Zoe programme to see positive changes.
Can you make a video on Neu5gc
GREAT REVIEW AS ALWAYS .I WOULD LIKE FOR YOU TO REVIEW VIOME ( IT IS AT HOME MICROBIOME HEALTH TEST , THAT SAID IS THE WAY TO BE BETTER )BECAUSE THEY GIVE YOU ADVICE REGARDING FOODS AND VITAMINS THAT YOUR BODY REALLY Y NEEDS . MORE OR LESS LIKE THIS BUT MORE STRUCTURED.
could you please make a video going more into depth on why pushing peoples serum cholesterol as low as possible with statins is NOT problematic? I'm struggling to understand why the goal of my cardiologist is to drop my LDL count as low as possible and how that's ok for the rest of my body... considering the brain is like 25% cholesterol.
I think the measurements are also hugely motivating, especially when the story is that the diet matches your personal results. Whether or not it matches.
Isn't the difference between just following the gov. recommendations vs the in depth Zoe plan kind of the point?! That's what Zoe is, isn't it, the attention!.... oh 08:06 yeah, that would be a great study!! but wait, could you not also just run the number against other such programs...weightwatchers and noom and the like and get a comparison?
Sir,
Will vitamins I take be destroyed if taken together with apple cider vinegar?Thank you
Dieting is for people who want to fail. A lifestyle change is what is required to lose weight. I would suggest a ketogenic lifestyle is the way to go. 😊😊😊
The control group should have been treated like the zoe group, but with an mediterran diet plan instead of an individual diet plan.
Anything else is useless. This was just marketing.
I doubt too many diet companies or gurus want to go up against the Mediterranean diet or any Blue Zone diets.
BTW it's not that there's a "diet" designed for you. Your body's readings of glucose and fat plus your gut biome are compared to thousands of others and from those, a scale of how your body would react to many more foods is proposed. From that scale, you can assemble meals that approach high scores that meld those three criteria. There is definitely a bias towards foods that feed the gut biome even if they raise glucose. I'm not convinced that is the best option.
My first question is "What science are they actually basis this on?" I'm really not aware of any research that would indicate that you can optimize someone's diet based on individual test results - outside of medical issues, of course. Let's just say you have a group of relatively healthy individuals who get the Zoe app. Other than calories, what are you going to change?
If I were to say to everyone just avoid ultra-processed foods, eat plenty of fruit and veg, whole grains, and a reasonable amount of lean meats, wouldn't that be pretty much cover everything?
I understand the appeal of personalised nutrition. Im a bit skeptical basing it on glycaemic load or spike.
Ultimately, each persons physiology has fundamental similarities, we all share the same biochemistry, we all have the same organs and hormones.
I tentatively suggest that these benefits could be achieved with Eat Real Food and watch/monitor/reduce/eliminate carbohydrates.
I agree that the control group was a bit weak. I would argue that an ideal control would have been treated exactly the same as the Zoe, but unknowingly put on a standard whole food Mediterranean diet. This would compare a proven, but not customized diet against a customized one with a minimum of confounders.
Interesting idea about sham control. Might there be ethical issues with a randomly generated algorithm sham ? Also would the pool of potential foods that the sham could potentially suggest need to be the same as the same pool of potential foods that Zoe could suggest to app users? Might it also be difficult to genuinely blind the participants to whether they receive sham or genuine tailored algorithm such as. Zoe. For example, if participants see they are getting intuitively unhealthy recommendations (unknowingly by random algorithm), they might suspect they’re on a sham and then lose faith, drop out, stop adhering to random guidelines, etc
Internet companies privacy policies are more like "Oops I did it again."
I don't give my personal information to anyone unless I am required by law or an unavoidable medical need. And it doesn't look like I need this app. Not at $50 per month.
What about matching everyone in group B with someone from group A and having them undergo the same steps to receive a personalized plan but giving them their counterpart's plan instead? You could pair them based on weight so caloric suggestions don't seem too wild.
This trial basically shows that the £400 Zoe program works better than a leaflet. I partook in Zoe last year. My biggest disappointment was it doesn't take into account activity levels and doesn't provide enough protein for active individuals.
Benefits for some people, probably not all.
It really does seem like a bad study and not very well thought out. What I'd really want to see is a study where the ZOE group ONLY gets the personalized diet plan, the tests and nothing else, and the control group gets the tests (but no personalized dietary recommendations, only general guidance, the purpose of this being that the tests will make the test subjects think more about their eating habits), and the control group would use a calorie/macro tracking app like Carbon Diet Coach or Macro Factor, and be told to choose the weight loss option on the default goal setting. This would then be followed by a period where the ZOE participants are asked to eat in accordance to their dietary plan with no tests or contact from coaches for 2 months, and the control group is told to keep using the calorie-tracking app with no more guidance, and then check up with all of them at the end.
Both groups would be taught how to use the respective apps, and obviously would log all the food they're eating. I think that would be the true test to see if there's any actual value in seeing how your body responds soon after eating certain foods, or if it's all the same when people at least try to control their calorie intake, or if there are differences in dietary adherence.
So it's basically a coach, not much more , and the science of personalized nutrition is not there yet, and customers are paying to provide Zoe research data in exchange for some generalised nutritional information.
Wouldn't the extra support given in the Zoe program only affect the results via increased adherence? They did a subgroup analysis comparing those in the top 30th percentile for adherence in both groups and the personalised intervention still had significantly better results. That analysis supports a personalised approach specifically, not just the overall high intervention approach.
they provide a bit more detail on that analysis in the methods, the adherence in that analysis was ~2x higher in the zoe group. probably a result of the support
@@NutritionMadeSimple Thanks Gil. That makes a difference. Sounds like they need to go back to their data and do another subgroup analysis, this time matching actual adherence rather than a percentile.
I understand the point you are making about judging a study based on its design no matter who it is funded by. However, that idea assumes that the quality of the study can in fact be inferred from the description by the authors. There has been an unnerving number of cases of known scientific fraud in studies that have been published in reputable journals. I am more familiar with this issue in social psychology than nutrition, but nonetheless, should people be suspicious when the people who carry out a study have a vested interest in how it turns out, even when they describe a study that should yield high quality data?
(Of course skepticism is often not required because industry studies often clearly don't actually support the claims for which they are used as evidence.)
Yes, outright fraud sometimes happens. We have a whole video about this with a science fraud expert :)
In those cases, the fraud is sometimes detected, but ultimately the litmus test is reproducibility. This goes for all science.
In the vast majority of cases the issue with industry-funded studies is the experimental design that can be set up in a favorable way to a certain product. This is confusing to the public seeing a flashy media headline but not that confusing once we go through the actual study methods.
The other thing to bear in mind is that bias is a characteristic of any human endeavor, so even studies without industry funding involve preferences and desires that can skew things. So in the end, with or without "suspicious" funding, it all comes down to those 2 key factors, experimental design and above all, reproducibility.
Sounds like hokum. Any diet that you adhere to will probably work. The key to any diet is that you have to be committed and be willing to sacrifice.
By the way Gil, adhere is pronounced, Ad-hear not ahh-deer.
For weight loss, maybe. When the goal of the diet is to improve many different health markers at the same time, many diets will not work.
@@TasteOfButterfliesI don't think that's true. If you're morbidly obese, all of your health markers will improve if you lose weight. I lost weight going vegan over the last year and all of my health markers massively improved. Every single health marker is in the normal range now which it wasn't previously and cholesterol and triglycerides are way down, A1C went from 5.7 to 5.1. APOB went from 106 to 82, even PSA improved slightly. I didn't even lose that much weight but everything improved, including BP.
Just wondering, you suggest to give a control group a Mediterranean diet in a perfect study. I fully agree. Yet in many clinical drug trials, you don't give people the best known drug on the market, but you offer people a "sugar pill", which is a really weak comparator. Do you have any idea why? Isn't it a similar form of "marketing" just to show a drug works?
it's an interesting Q, it depends what is already known. when effective drugs are already in the market, the new drug being tested is often given on top of the known drug (compared to the known drug alone + placebo). this is because it is unethical to leave people untreated in a placebo group just to run a trial if a treatment already exists
new drugs are also given on top of standard of care (lifestyle advice etc)
on the other hand if there is nothing identified for the condition being studied, then the placebo is often used alone
@@NutritionMadeSimple Makes sense, thank you for answering my question!
Isnt there enough information gathering already. Just got to match the information gathered on us, to our health records, to find the best diet. Dont know about paying information gatherers
Cronometer FTW
And develop the deep statistical knowledge of the "Conquer Aging or Die Trying" guy to be able to correlate the foods you enter into the Chronometer with your blood test results.
@@aquamarine99911 Or just follow a DASH/Mediterranean Diet lol
@@aquamarine99911 he is very good
👏👏👏
I like many of the key people at Zoe but this study was clearly biased towards a positive outcome and that is disappointing.
My preference would be for a sham intervention. All support the same, recommended to USDA or Mediterranean.
That would allow some greater insights.
A random set of biomarkers would not be representative. Better would be mixing up everyone in the control, so they have someone else's in the group. And of course, double-blind.
I doubt you need to give a stool sample to be told that eating chocolate digestive biscuits is sub optimal for gut health or any other health for that matter...
That App will soon be based on the latest AI, GPT-4o. You will use your phone to show it what you are eating and it will nag you to death.
+1 on really rubbish design. Looks to me this design was influenced by the funder. Any idiot (me and Gil) would come up with the pseudo personalised diet as the only control that would test the hypothesis. I still reckon that personalised diets are bunk beyond just finding what you like eating. Yet to see evidence to the contrary.
In addition Zoe when asked admitted they didn’t know if our tolerance to foods in other words what foods score bad and good may or may not change over time which would possibly indicate that if you were to sign up then you are in a never ending loop of testing for a lifetime to see what is and isn’t best to consume based on your guy’s reaction to those foods and how your body processes them. If this is the case, then that’s an extremely expensive way to find out! Might as well not overthink it and just exercise and cut out ultra processed foods for the most part in your diet and eating a wide variety of plants and you should be fine.
Copy of inside tracker
0th
People hoping that their personalized diet is going to include ice cream and McDonalds. Move on guys, wholefoods, PUFAs, variety of fruits and vegetables, control saturated fat and exercise. No need of paying 650 USD.
I agree. I have a problem with a stranger giving one-size-fits-all health advice about complex, multifactorial health conditions, just based on having viewed a bunch of numbers, as well. How can it not be, if the person processing the numbers hadn't asked about my history or lifestyle? Here are some real suggestions I've been given over the years, from real doctors, after having viewed my A1C of 6.0, where it's been for over twenty years: 1. limit consumption of refined sugars (in the rare event that I have more than the 36 grams that's in the federal guideline, I exercise after). 2. exercise (I do five hours a week of cardio and five hours a week of weights). 3. eat a low carb diet (without having gotten into quality of carbs or how I eat them or when I eat or how big the meals are). 4. Lose weight (I'm so skinny that you can count my ribs). The idea that when we eat too many carbs, our bodies can't handle it, and we get elevated glucose, and so the best way to prevent this, is to eat fewer carbs, may seem plausible at first glance. Another person could eat junk food every day, and be thirty pounds overweight, and yet have lower A1C than I do, and lower blood pressure, because of genetics. That's the key concept: many health conditions have a genetic component, and we can only do so much with "lifestyle changes"
Timmy is a bit sketchy. Using his professorship and expert status to get rich.
You should charge for your videos 😀
No
That would prevent him from reaching such a large audience.
He gets paid by youtube ad revenue anyway.
if it depends on me the content will be free of charge & free of sponsors forevah... ;)
@@NutritionMadeSimple I was only kidding. Bad humor is difficult to convey in writing. But if some people get paid for bad nutrition advice, you should get paid for good advice.