Google is teaming up with Singapore-based microbiome company AMILI to launch a personalized nutrition app called AMILI Optimise, one that deliberately breaks from the calorie-counting model that has defined diet apps for the past decade. Instead of asking users to log food and track a single calorie total, the app builds recommendations around three biological signals: the individual’s gut microbiome composition, their actual dietary intake, and their measured post-meal, or postprandial, blood glucose response.
Why calories alone fall short
The core problem with calorie counting has always been that it treats every calorie as biologically identical, when in reality the same meal can produce very different metabolic responses in two different people. Two people eating an identical sandwich can show markedly different blood sugar spikes and different downstream effects on energy and hunger, driven in part by differences in the trillions of bacteria living in their gut. AMILI Optimise is built around that variability rather than around it, using an individual’s own microbiome and glucose response as the basis for what food advice actually gets generated.
How the three signals combine
Gut microbiome composition gives a baseline picture of which bacterial populations are present and how they’re likely to process different foods. Dietary intake data tracks what a person is actually eating, day to day. Postprandial glucose response — how much and how quickly blood sugar rises after a specific meal — closes the loop by showing the real physiological outcome of that food choice for that specific person. Combining all three lets the app move from generic dietary guidelines toward recommendations tailored to an individual’s actual biology, an approach long used in specialized clinical and research settings but not previously packaged into a mainstream consumer app backed by a company with Google’s reach.
Part of a broader shift in nutrition apps
AMILI Optimise reflects a wider 2026 trend among AI-powered nutrition apps: a move away from calories as the sole metric and toward a fuller set of biological signals, including sleep quality, stress levels, menstrual cycle phase, and activity level alongside glucose response. Competing apps have also made rapid gains on the input side of the problem — AI photo-recognition features can now analyze a picture of a meal and produce accurate calorie and macronutrient estimates in under five seconds, removing the tedious manual logging that has historically caused many diet-app users to abandon tracking altogether.
The market opportunity
The numbers behind this shift are substantial. The global diet and nutrition app market was valued at around $6.13 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to roughly $28.36 billion by 2035, a nearly five-fold increase over the decade. That growth trajectory is drawing major technology players like Google into a space historically dominated by smaller, specialized health-tech startups, and signals that personalized, biology-driven nutrition guidance is expected to become a mainstream consumer expectation rather than a niche premium feature.
What remains to be proven
Personalizing nutrition advice around microbiome data is scientifically promising but still a developing field — the relationship between specific bacterial populations and long-term health outcomes is an active area of research, not a fully settled science, and recommendations generated today may need to evolve as the underlying research matures. There’s also a practical question of accessibility: gathering meaningful microbiome and glucose-response data typically requires more effort and cost than simply photographing a plate of food, which could limit how many users engage deeply enough with AMILI Optimise to benefit from its more sophisticated approach versus a simpler photo-based competitor.
What’s next
As AMILI Optimise rolls out, its success will likely hinge on whether users find the added effort of microbiome and glucose tracking worth the more personalized guidance it produces, especially against competitors offering near-instant photo-based estimates. Given the market’s projected growth, expect more technology and health companies to experiment with combining multiple biological signals rather than competing solely on how quickly they can identify a plate of food — the direction Google and AMILI are betting the next generation of nutrition apps will move. Dietitians and metabolic health researchers will also be watching whether AMILI Optimise’s recommendations, drawn from an individual’s specific biology, actually translate into better long-term adherence and health outcomes than simpler, more accessible calorie-tracking tools have historically achieved.
