Daily30 + A review from a metabolic health expert

Zoe has done it again. In January, people queued for the £2 a day (£2.20 in convenience M&S stores) Gut Shot. And now, six months later, the launch of Zoe’s second product, Daily30+, a wholefood supplement, has us all talking. But this time, you’ll need to head to Waitrose.

Natalie Louise Burrows, registered Nutritional Therapist and Clinic Director at Integral Wellness, discussed the study behind the new whole-food supplement, the ingredients and nutrients it delivers, the cost compared to other alternatives, and the benefits you can expect.

The 30 plant foods a week advice stemmed from Tim Spectors' work, and it’s been a brilliant extension to the five-a-day campaign the government has been exhausting since 2001 (with little improvement across the country).

Increasing your plant volume and variety to 30 different foods a week is an easy and accessible calculation for meals. It’s a fun activity for all, including children, and it includes support for farmers as we add more colour to our shopping trolleys each week and try out new farmers' markets. I’m a big fan, so why do we need 30 daily now? It feels like there has been confusion between 30 plants and 30g of daily fibre.

As with other products, we’ve questioned this year ( Anti-Spike , Gut Shot ), is this just another money spinner, or are there real benefits to this product that are hard to find elsewhere? Let’s take a look.

Daily 30+ ingredients:

Flaxseed, Red Lentil Flakes, Grape Seed, Chia Seeds, Sunflower Seeds, Chicory Root Inulin, Pumpkin Seeds, Puffed Quinoa, Almonds, Hazelnuts, Walnuts, Red Beetroot Flakes, Carrot Flakes, Nutritional Yeast Flakes, Hemp Seeds, White Mushroom, Thyme, Onion, Parsley, Turmeric, Cumin, Chaga, Lion's Mane, Shiitake, Maitake, Tremella, Reishi, Cordyceps, Garlic, Rosemary, Baobab Fruit Pulp, Buckthorn

There are some great ingredients here. Flaxseed, chia, and sunflower seeds contain omega-3s; garlic, mushrooms, and chicory root are beneficial prebiotic fibres; and thyme, parsley, turmeric and cumin are anti-inflammatory herbs and spices.

There’s no doubt there is a great collection of ingredients. But they are available in less expensive forms and those forms are also easily added to meals.

Let’s not forget that chewing is also a vital part of digestion. Eating whole foods engages the need to chew before swallowing more than this food supplement, which is made of tiny flakes, seeds (which are best soaked), and ground ingredients. So whether you add it to your daily routine or not, don’t forget to chew!

Research standards are important, especially when they guide public health decisions. Understandably, the Zoe team has criticised industry-funded research in the past due to invested interest increasing the risk of biassed outcomes. This is a concern across the health industry. However, the study for Daily30+ is a Zoe-funded research study, and although it was a gold-standard randomised controlled trial (kudos, they are not easy to complete), it had a small participation size and questionable methodology.

Whilst the study is aimed to simulate a real-life scenario by comparing bread croutons against the Daily30+ while maintaining the overall meal calories, comparing the benefits of a food supplement to something with significantly lower fibre content seems unnecessary. Particularly when fibre is already so well-researched. The comparable would be to study the health advantages of vegetables over a slice of white bread - these are widely acknowledged, making the need for such research questionable.

Zoe has stated that the trial participants reported that the benefits of taking Daily30+ are due to the fibre content. Instead, using equal calories and fibre content for the RCT could have made a more competing and interesting study outcome.

In real life, you could skip the croutons and add some nuts, seeds and an additional vegetable to the meal. 

It’s not gone unnoticed that Zoe food items have been launched in two of the most affluent high-street supermarkets—first M&S and now Waitrose. If we really are to change the narrative about people’s health and nutrition choices, we must illustrate that healthy, nourishing whole food is available to everyone in every supermarket.

With a price of £568 a year, it’s understandable if you cannot afford this food supplement. Don’t worry; 30 different plant foods can be found in the fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, and plant proteins you purchase. Spend more time in those supermarket aisles and pick as much variety as possible. A bag of chia seeds is just £1.75 for 150g, and flaxseeds are roughly £4 for 200g. There are many other options to achieve great health and daily fibre needs.

Taking a detailed look at the packaging, you can see from the ingredients list that the Daily30+ contains a sixth of your daily fibre (not bad, but a decent-sized apple has 5g of fibre too). It also has 63kcal, so for anyone working on weight loss, the addition of this is negligible from a calorie perspective and very beneficial with the nutrients and satiety it provides.

The 15g serving also provides 4g of fat, 3g of carbohydrates, of which 0.5g are sugars (yay), and 3g of protein. No problem; remember, it’s a supplement, not a meal.

Additional nutrients mentioned in the nutrition table include omega-3 at 0.3g, which is a good amount for 15g (the equivalent serving of salmon would be 0.6g), but it won’t be enough to dampen the fire of an inflammatory lifestyle.

Copper is also listed, with 18% of your recommended amount delivered with a spoonful of the Daily30+, but there is no mention of its competing nutrient, Zinc, which is more difficult to absorb from foods than copper. Additionally, zinc is often a mineral people have insufficient or deficient levels of.

Finally, including multiple medicinal mushrooms—e.g., Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, and Reishi—is a popular choice, but alas, they are at the very end of the ingredients list, creating questionable advantages for their benefits in such a low dose.

Of course, there is good news. Those who have busy lives and can afford this product should enjoy it. There are some great ingredients in the list. It smells good, tastes good, and has a good balance of protein, fats, and fibre alongside a dash of omega 3, so you are ticking a healthful box.

As part of the Waitrose offer, you can purchase just the 15g daily sachet as part of a meal deal, which is a smart way of adding beneficial nutrients to processed/ultra-processed convenience foods. Although I’m not sure this works well in a sandwich, but each to their own.

I recommend that you proceed with caution. If you don’t have much fibre in your diet now, you may feel the gurgling gut effects of adding this to your meals daily. Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to upping your fibre.

Additionally, it isn’t a failsafe for other changes—no supplement is. As their name suggests, supplements supplement the diet and lifestyle, and the latter should provide the health benefits you’re looking for. Yet, we all know that at certain points in our lives, supplements can be incredibly beneficial for increasing nutrient levels and improving symptoms, health conditions and overall well-being. However, those supplements tend to be scientifically evidenced, in therapeutic doses, and taken only when advised by a qualified practitioner and alongside dietary changes.

Those are the ones Tim Spector believes are a waste of money… We’ll leave that one there.