Health app and supplement brand Zoe’s new ‘documentary’ – 6 Weeks To Fix Their Gut Health! – follows three people overhauling their diet by increasing fibre intake, eating 30 different plants each week, and scoring food against the app’s proprietary processed food risk scale.
No prizes for guessing the outcome: all three improve their gut health and report better energy levels and reduced anxiety.
But here’s the catch. The participants also undergo blood tests, which were axed from the Zoe programme last year. Yet it is these results that reveal Rob faces a fivefold increased risk of a heart attack despite his microbiome score being average. And unlike most members, he gets to discuss his results with Zoe co-founder Tim Spector on a Zoom call.
Meanwhile, as Lucy navigates a significant change to her diet, Zoe’s head nutritionist shows up in her kitchen for a pep talk. Ordinary Zoe customers must make do with Ziggie, an AI chatbot that can’t even determine the best thing to order at Pret. Zoe ended live chats with nutritionists in 2024.
This being a docu-advert, no challenging questions are asked. Yet nuance is sorely needed. “Gut health can have a major impact on most mental health conditions,” Spector claims. But eating more cannellini beans does not negate trauma, a break-up, or financial insecurity.
While the programme has the high production values of a documentary, the hour-long programme is, sadly, little more than an extended advert.
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