The science behind GoodEnough

GoodEnough's ratings and course come from reading the research, not from following one guru. We audited every habit for how strong the evidence is, how little effort it takes, and how broadly it applies. Then we kept the smallest set that works.

The books

• Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism
• Atomic Habits
• Blue Zones
• Built to Move
• Complete Food and Nutrition Guide
• Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy
• Exercised
• Food for Life
• Food Rules
• Good Energy
• In Defense of Food
• Intuitive Eating
• Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease
• Next Level
• Outlive
• Skinny Liver
• Spoon-Fed
• The DASH Diet for Hypertension
• The Diabetes Code
• The End of Overeating
• Ultra-Processed People
• What to Eat Now
• Why We Sleep
• Younger Next Year

The full reading list

The habits above draw most directly on the books we cite for specific claims. Here is the complete library we read to build GoodEnough.

• A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives
• Advanced Nutrition and Human Metabolism
• Ageless
• Atomic Habits
• Beat the Heart Attack Gene
• Built to Move
• Complete Food and Nutrition Guide
• Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy
• Exercised
• Food for Life
• Food Politics
• Food Rules
• Good Energy
• Hooked
• In Defense of Food
• Intuitive Eating
• Krause and Mahan's Food and the Nutrition Care Process
• Lifespan
• Metabolical
• Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease
• Next Level
• Outlive
• Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease
• Salt Sugar Fat
• Skinny Liver
• Spoon-Fed
• The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer
• The Case Against Sugar
• The DASH Diet for Hypertension
• The Diabetes Code
• The Dorito Effect
• The End of Overeating
• Ultra-Processed People
• What to Eat Now
• Why We Sleep
• Younger Next Year

Practitioner-endorsed additions

Two movement habits, a two-hand bar hang and the world's greatest stretch, are widely used by coaches but are not drawn from the source books. We include them because they pass our effort and universality filters, and we list them here for transparency.

Key studies we lean on

• Hall et al. (2019, NIH metabolic-ward trial): A controlled inpatient study found that people eating ultra-processed food consumed significantly more calories and gained weight compared to those eating unprocessed food, even when both diets were matched for total calories offered.
• PREDIMED: A large Spanish trial showed that a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or mixed nuts reduced major cardiovascular events by roughly 30% compared to a low-fat control diet.
• Lyon Diet Heart Study: A French randomized trial found that a Mediterranean-style diet reduced recurrent heart attack and cardiac death by more than 70% over four years.
• DASH and DASH-Sodium: Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension trials demonstrated that a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy reduces blood pressure, with further benefit from reducing sodium.
• PREDICT study: This large personalized-nutrition study showed wide individual variation in blood glucose, insulin, and fat responses to identical meals, supporting the idea that personal experiments matter alongside population averages.

How we choose what to include

Every candidate habit goes through a three-axis audit: strength of evidence (rated 1 to 5), ease of adoption (also 1 to 5), and how broadly it applies across different ages and life stages. A habit enters the core course only when it scores 3 or higher on both evidence and effort. We then apply a minimum-effective-dose rule: if a smaller version of a habit gets most of the benefit, that smaller version is what we teach.

Important

GoodEnough is a wellness app and is not a medical service. It does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition. The information on this page is for general educational purposes only. Talk to your doctor about any health concern before making changes to your diet, exercise, or sleep habits.