What is ZOE?
ZOE is a gut health science company that turns world-leading research into everyday gut health products.
We run the world’s largest gut health and nutrition study. Thanks to our members, we have built the largest database of DNA sequenced gut samples in the world — 300,000 and growing. Our gut health research informs everything we create.
Our mission is to improve the health of millions, with our supplements and foods, the ZOE app, our free podcast, and gut health testing.
ZOE’s scientists design these products based on our ground-breaking gut health and nutrition research, and the enormous dataset generated from our own trials. We work with world-renowned researchers from top scientific institutions, and publish our findings in the world’s most influential scientific journals.
Why does gut health matter?
Gut health is health
Each of us has trillions of microbes in our gut. Over the last 20 years, scientists have discovered they are vital for good health. They help you digest your food and extract nutrients, but their influence spreads far beyond the walls of your gut. Each microbe is like a little chemical factory, creating nutrients that can support every aspect of your body.
The latest science shows that gut microbes support healthy aging and help maintain a healthy weight. They keep your immune system in balance and reduce inflammation. There are links between the gut microbiome and heart disease, cancer, and more.
ZOE’s own research demonstrates deep links between the gut microbiome and mood, energy, and sleep. One of our clinical trials showed that improving your gut microbiome through food can lead to improved energy levels and mood — in as little as days. And in the long run, research suggests links between a healthy gut and better brain health as you age.
Again, gut health is health
However, our ultra-processed food environment is starving our microbes of nutrients. As a result, we’re feeling worse and dying many years earlier than we should.
Our good microbes need a wide variety of plants to arrive in our gut, ideally at least 30 each week. Just like in a zoo, each of our different species of microbes has different food that they prefer to eat. However, ultraprocessed foods contain very little that can feed our good bugs but are full of additives, like emulsifiers and sweeteners, that can harm our gut. The result is that most of us have poor gut health.
Thankfully, there is a better way.
Why we need a gut health revolution
Unlike genes, your gut microbiome is flexible. By changing the food you eat, you can increase your “good” gut microbes: helping you feel better in days and live more healthy years.
By supporting gut health, people report having more energy, better sleep, and improved mood within just a few days. This in itself can be life-changing. But the potential impact on longevity is huge.
In the US and UK, healthy life expectancy is falling, and most people spend the last decades of their lives plagued with chronic conditions. This is partly linked to poor gut health, which is associated with everything from heart disease and cancer to brain health.
Big Food corporations churn out ultraprocessed foods, which now make up around two-thirds of our diet. Research has proven that consuming these products regularly is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, mental health conditions, neurodegenerative diseases, and on and on.
Big Food systematically meddles in law-making processes, worsening this global pandemic of chronic disease. They use shadowy backdoor tactics to prevent regulations while making huge profits.
But ZOE’s community of over 3 million people is starting to make a difference. Governments are finally talking about UPFs. Big Food is on the defensive. And many of our members are driving the biggest breakthroughs in gut health science in a generation by participating in ZOE’s clinical trials.
What we have discovered from our clinical trials
Gut health is health: Without a thriving, diverse gut microbiome, overall good health is not achievable. Everything starts with the gut.
What you eat shapes your health: Improving what you eat is the single biggest change most people can make to improve their health.
Abundance, not restriction: Restrictive diets suck the joy out of life, and in the long run, they fail. Calorie counting has been proven to fail for 80% of people. The new science of gut health shows that improving your diet is about adding to your plate, not taking things away. By feeding your good bugs, you can improve your health and rekindle the pleasure of eating food. Food should be a joy. Nothing is off limits. At ZOE, what you eat is not about perfection, but about building a healthy lifestyle that can be sustained in the long run.
Personalization beats one-size-fits-all: We all respond differently to food (even identical twins), so the best outcomes come from advice tailored to you and your life.
ZOE’s science-first approach
At ZOE, we rely on science to guide us. We run the world’s largest gut health and nutrition study, carry out frequent clinical trials, publish peer‑reviewed research, and have a database of over 300,000 DNA sequenced gut samples. But we aren’t done yet.
We aim to sequence the gut profiles of one million people to provide our GutEngine AI model with the training data needed to transform human health in new ways. Reaching this goal will provide an in-depth understanding of how the gut microbiome affects health in unprecedented detail.
Guided by world-renowned scientists
ZOE’s scientific co-founder and a professor of epidemiology at King’s College London
Professor Tim Spector
ZOE Co-founder
Our chief scientist and professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King's College London
Professor Sarah Berry
Chief Science Officer at ZOE
ZOE’s head nutritionist and Nutrition Topic Lead at Imperial College London School of Medicine.
Dr. Federica Amati
Head of Nutrition at ZOE
Real people’s experiences: Life on ZOE
ZOE isn’t just about science; it’s about real people’s experiences. Thousands of people tell us that ZOE changed their lives. So, to demonstrate what it feels like, we created an experiment that became a documentary.
If you’d like to hear about our members' experience, then take a look at our film, The Gut Health Challenge. It documents an experiment that asks, “Can nutrition solve low energy and poor sleep in just six weeks?“
*Daily30 and the Gut Health Bar are a natural source of calcium and copper. Calcium contributes to the normal function of digestive enzymes. Copper contributes to normal energy-yielding metabolism and normal hair pigmentation and normal skin pigmentation.