Overview
- Products: GenoVive Weight Management DNA Test, meal delivery
- Cost: GenoVive does not list prices on their website. According to third-party websites, prices vary from $149 for the DNA analysis to $450 a month for the meals
- Reports: GenoVive Nutrition and Fitness Genetic Profile Report
- Raw data access: No
- Privacy: GenoVive claims not to sell or give any of your information to third parties for any purposes.
- Alternatives: SelfDecode – The best option for health-focused DNA analysis with personalized reports, symptom analysis, and health recommendations.
Pros
- Claims to offer meal and exercise plan based on your DNA results.
Cons
- GenoVive offers its services exclusively through health care professionals such as dietitians and physicians.
- Limited scope of health reports.
- Delivered meals are not customizable.
- Only analyzes 24 genetic markers.
- Does not offer advanced polygenic risk scoring.
- Does not provide personalized health recommendations
- Does not integrate lab analysis to provide health insights
About GenoVive
GenoVive was founded in 2008 as a division of Genvis Bio Group, LLC, based in New Orleans, LA. CEO Victor Castellon is also the founder of Bovigen, a company that aimed to make improvements in the beef industry’s practices surrounding breeding.
GenoVive’s geneticists and food scientists have developed customized, all-natural meal and exercise programs, featuring ideal combinations of macronutrients based on individual DNA.
Review of GenoVive Products & Features
GenoVive offers a DNA test to provide help you better understand your nutritional needs. They claim to deliver meals based on genetic results, which include six days of meals each week.
After your DNA analysis is completed, you will receive a report that contains your meal program and exercise plan. Once your shipments start, you will receive six meal kits each week. These meal kits include breakfast, lunch, dinner, and other products. The company claims that your analysis will also determine the number of calories you eat per day.
GenoVive’s GenoFlex app allows customization and tracking of nutrition and exercise programs. The GenoFlex app will also integrate with popular devices such as Fitbit and the Aria scale.
A workout routine from GenoVive will include a 12-week long program broken out into three phases of four weeks each.
The three phases are start-up, intermediate, and advanced. Start-up has you work out for three to four days per week. The intermediate phase can have you working out four to five days per week, and advanced includes five to six days per week.
Review of GenoVive Reports
Section One: Overview
The first section of the report gives specific results for each of the 24 genetic markers tested.
Section One also gives a general overview of how genes make individuals unique in terms of nutritional and fitness needs, as well as how they can affect behavioral traits related to health and wellness. This explanation covers the vocabulary used in the rest of the report and points to resources for those who want a deeper understanding of the science behind the GenoVive program.
Section Two: Nutrition
Section Two explains in greater detail what the genetic test results reveal about nutritional needs. It offers specific caloric and serving units to target five different activity levels. This allows you to adjust your nutritional intake based on changing levels of physical activity.
Section Three: Fitness Related Results
Section Three explains what the test results suggest about the need for intensity and duration of weekly exercise.
This section also examines what the genetic results suggest about which exercises and sports the individual may be best suited, but GenoVive only analyzes a few SNPs to generate the report.
Section Three concludes with a discussion about what the test reveals about the best methods of resistance training for the individual.
Section Four: Genetics and Behavior
Section Four discusses how genes and mood influence behavior and food choices. Similar to the previous sections, the report only analyzes a limited number of genetic variants.
Cost of GenoVive
Because each healthcare provider is able to offer the GenoVive DNA test on their own, there is no set cost for the test. Prices start at $149 for the test, and the meal plans can range from $399 to $549 per month. GenoVive does not include pricing information on their site, so these figures have been gathered from third-party websites.
Health Recommendations from GenoVive
Exercise suggestions are provided for participants on the GenoVive website.
Those who choose to follow the Meal Plan given to them are sent a weekly shipment of 6 packaged meals, one for each day, for a total of 24 per month. They are each designed to meet the requirement of the recommended daily calorie intake: 1300, 1600, or 1900 calories.
Users can also check their Weight Management Genetic Profile Report to see the percentage of macronutrients needed daily, as well as the recommended exercise intensity. However, GenoVive only looks at a few SNPs to generate the results, so the results may not be the most accurate. Plus, the recommendations provided in the reports are very general and not detailed.
SNP Analysis vs PRS vs Advanced PRS
Genetic testing can vary widely in what it reveals about your health depending on whether it focuses on individual SNPs, basic polygenic risk scores (PRS), or advanced PRS.
Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis examines individual genetic variants, which are small changes in your DNA that may slightly influence your risk for specific traits or conditions. GenoVive, for example, only analyzes 24 SNPs to provide recommendations for diet and exercise. While this can give a general sense of how your body may respond to certain nutrients or physical activity, the information is very limited and offers only a narrow view of your genetic profile.
Basic PRS improves on this approach by combining the effects of multiple SNPs into a single score, capturing more of the polygenic nature of complex traits and disease risk. These scores provide a broader perspective than single SNPs, but most consumer tests only incorporate a few dozen or a few hundred variants, which still leaves a substantial gap in understanding your genetic influences.
Advanced PRS, like the approach used by SelfDecode, takes this concept further by analyzing hundreds of thousands to millions of variants and integrating additional factors such as age, sex, ancestry, symptoms, and lab results. This allows for highly accurate predictions of conditions and traits and generates actionable insights for diet, supplementation, lifestyle, and disease prevention.
Unlike GenoVive, which delivers limited recommendations based on a handful of markers, advanced PRS provides a holistic view of your genetics and offers science-backed, personalized guidance that can be implemented immediately.
Ultimately, while SNP analysis can be interesting for exploring a few genes and basic PRS provides a slightly broader outlook, advanced PRS delivers the clearest and most actionable insights for truly understanding your genetic profile and taking control of your health. Read more here.
Review of GenoVive Privacy & Data Security
The company claims that the results of a customer’s analysis will never be shared with a third party without consent. Your sample will either be destroyed according to HIPAA guidelines, or GenoVive will keep your sample stored and secure so that it can be reanalyzed. The latter is in case new products become available which need to examine SNPs that are not currently being used.
GenoVive Reviews
Because GenoVive operates exclusively through practitioners, they have not been reviewed extensively online. Their Facebook profile is not a business page, and their Twitter profile has been inactive since 2017.
The Canyon Ranch chose the GenoVive service as part of their guest offerings. Canyon Ranch is a luxury wellness lifestyle brand that operates two destination health spa resorts and one retreat property in the United States.
The Men’s Journal included GenoVive on their list of nutritional meal delivery services for ‘guys on the go’.
Alternatives to GenoVive
While GenoVive offers diet and exercise guidance based on 24 genetic markers, SelfDecode provides a far more comprehensive, science-backed approach to personalized health. SelfDecode goes beyond basic SNP analysis by using advanced ancestry-adjusted polygenic risk scoring, published in a Nature journal, to deliver the most accurate predictions of traits and conditions in the industry. Reports integrate symptoms, lab results, and millions of variants, generating actionable recommendations for supplements, diet, lifestyle, and overall wellness.
SelfDecode has six published validation studies in top-tier journals and analyzes over 200 million variants across all reports using advanced AI. Reports are thorough, covering more than 1,500 health topics, and incorporate multiomics analysis, integrating genetics with blood tests and other biomarkers. Privacy and security are strict, with full HIPAA and GDPR compliance. While building this platform required $25M, SelfDecode delivers a level of insight and accuracy that is impossible with simpler services like GenoVive.
| Feature | SelfDecode/PromicsEdge | GenoVive |
| Personalized health recommendations | Yes, based on genetics, labs, symptoms, and lifestyle | Limited to diet & exercise guidance from 24 SNPs |
| Number of variants analyzed | Millions per report, 200M actively analyzed | 24 SNPs |
| Polygenic risk scoring | Advanced ancestry-adjusted PRS | Not available |
| Number of Reports | 1,500+ reports | Nutrition and fitness report only |
| Validation & Research | 6 published validation studies in peer-reviewed journals | Not publicly available |
| Privacy & Security | HIPAA & GDPR compliant | Unclear; privacy details not disclosed |
| Practitioner Tools | Dedicated practitioner portals and decision support | Basic practitioner access |
| Multiomics integration | Yes, incorporates blood tests and other biomarkers | No |
Unlike GenoVive, SelfDecode provides users with daily updates through a personalized genetics blog, detailed explanations of every recommendation, and actionable guidance they can implement immediately without needing a healthcare provider to interpret results.
GenoVive Review Summary
GenoVive is a meal delivery and exercise program that delivers weekly meals and an exercise plan.
The GenoVive diet program may provide you with all the foods you need during the program, but it is also a costly one. At nearly $600 to start and then $450 each month thereafter, it may be too expensive for many. Not to mention, there is an additional cost for the free day of the week where food and drinks are not supplied.
It is still possible to find other diet and nutrition programs that offer great guidance in a healthy lifestyle, and allow you to achieve your weight loss goals at a much more affordable rate.
GenoVive only looks at 24 genetic markers to make their recommendations, which is a fraction of what other companies such as SelfDecode analyzes. SelfDecode is the only direct to consumer company that uses AI in genomics to give genetic risk scores and truly personalized recommendations based on all relevant markers. SelfDecode analyzed up to 200M genetic variants to give you the most accurate and science-based reports.
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