FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

 The Troo Rapid Results Gut Health Test Kit is a functional gut health test – this analyses how well your gut is functioning.  It does this by analysing key gut health biomarkers - the levels of Short-Chain Fatty Acids that your good gut bacteria are producing.   We look at the levels of 3 of the key SCFAs, Acetate, Propionate and Butyrate, scoring your levels of each of them individually and in combination to get your overall gut score. 

 Your gut score is a snapshot in time of how your successful your gut bacteria are at producing the key SCFAs based on your diet as well as genetics, sex, age and lifestyle. Within a week you will understand how well your gut is functioning and what actions you need to take across your diet and lifestyle to make improvements. 

Most other gut tests currently available look at the composition of the bacteria in your gut i.e. how many butyrate producing bacteria do you have compared to other bacteria. Composition gut testing is usually carried out by Next Generation Sequencing, which is time consuming and costly for the equipment and consumables. 

The Troo Rapid Results Gut Test on the other hand is a functional gut test i.e. it measures how much butyrate is actually produced by your gut bacteria. The bacteria in the gut produce many vital vitamins, hormones, neurochemicals and metabolites, which keep you healthy. The most abundant products of gut bacteria are metabolites called Short-Chain fatty Acids making them an ideal overall indicator for how well your gut is functioning. These metabolites are analysed by Gas Chromatography - the gold standard in analytical chemistry which naturally brings analysis efficiencies and costs savings but the data produced is just as powerful if not more so. 

Over the past 10 years gut health and the microbiome has been rigorously studied at Universities across the globe, In fact over 20,000 scientific articles have been published covering the gut microbiome and how it impacts both of physical and mental health and well being. 

 It’s also not stopping, new discoveries are being made every day. Our UK based scientists keep on top of this research to ensure we know what is going on and how we can learn from it. Short-Chain Fatty Acids; acetate, propionate and butyrate play vital roles in the body. 

Acetate is the most abundant SCFA and should make up more than half of the total SCFAs detected. Acetate regulates gut pH, protects against pathogens, boosts the immune system, controls insulin sensitivity to combat type 2 diabetes and nourishes butyrate-producing bacteria. 

Propionate has wide-reaching effects including controlling weight loss and appetite and is anti-inflammatory which relieves and prevents irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease  

Butyrate has several functions. These include providing up to 70% of the energy needed for the cells in the colon; helping prevent leaky gut; and helping the colon with repair, which prevents illnesses such as ulcerative colitis. Butyrate also maintains the gut-brain axis and supports mental health. For example, butyrate increases the synthesis of the “happy hormone” serotonin, which diminishes anxiety and improves mood.  

Remember, any gut test is a snapshot in time. Your gut health can be very quickly effected by a big night out; a bout of illness of even over exertion at the gym. So to make your test results as representative as possible we’d recommend you take the stool sample on a very average day that reflects your usual lifestyle. 

We’d advise only collecting a stool sample when you don’t have any tummy problems (i.e. severe diaorrhea or constipation). Also if you’re on a course of medication or have been taking antibiotics or have undergone surgery, wait at least 3 months before taking the Troo Rapid Results Gut Health Test. If you take medication as part of your every day symptom management then this is fine as this represents your ‘usual’ situation.  

Don’t worry about any of this – your sample is in a special liquid that keeps it safe and stable for quite a while. 

Kits have a 6 month expiry date. Please ensure you use the test kit within a few weeks of receiving it.

We’ve looked around the world to provide our customers with a test that is: 

Quick – who wants to wait weeks and weeks to know if your gut is working well? You also want to see the results of any diet and lifestyle changes you make, so speed is important. We’re really pleased to have the quickest test results available, up to 7 weeks quicker than the market leader.

Cost Effective – At £80 per test (including all P&P) or an annual testing programme (4 tests per year) for £240 – this is more than half the price of the market leader. 

Accurate – the process used for analysis is Gas Chromatography - the gold standard in analytical chemistry.

Actionable – we don’t want you to have to trawl through a technical 93 page report to try to understand your issues. We like to keep it simple and actionable, so you know what you need to do to improve and reap the benefits of good gut health.  You can see a sample of our report in the product page.

We also ideally wanted a testing partner that was based in the UK and who were as passionate about Gut health as we are, NeoVos ticked the boxes in all of these areas. They are also lovely people, something that is really important to us at Troo. 

NeoVos provide cutting-edge laboratory analysis to identify your current health and give well-researched advice so that you can do something about it. They do this by reviewing hundreds of technical papers and further developing them in their laboratories until they are confident that the analysis is sound, and the advice given advice will make a difference. The gut test has been developed by their very own scientists to combat the growing issue of gut health. 

NeoVos, set out to design a powerful and personalised tool, that is quick and affordable giving a snapshot of your gut health today. Like us at Troo, they aim to help spread gut health awareness; prevent many illnesses as well as alleviating those currently suffering from gut related issues.

Of course! Your medical and personal data are safe through out the process, from ordering your kit from us at Troo to receiving results online from Neovos. 

You can read the Troo Privacy Policy and the Neovos Privacy policy. In addition: User Data are securely stored on certified servers located within the UK Full UK GDPR compliance registered with Information Commissioner’s Office.

Deliveries to Ireland and Germany should take approximately 3 working days but please be aware we are monitoring the situation with deliveries to the EU since Brexit. 

 As a way of saying thanks for joining us on our mission to improve the nation’s gut health, we’ll also give you 10% off the RRP when you subscribe (this is applicable to our single products. If you're interested in buying a pre-made bundle, we've already applied a 10% discount to those!). 

The quickest and easiest way is to head to our Bundles in the Shop and choose the monthly or bi-monthly bundles. From there, you can build you own bundle - any product, any flavour. 

Or, if you're browsing through the single products, you can also choose either a one time or subscription purchase. You’ll see that on each item, you have the ‘one time’ option and then below it, there’s an option to purchase it each month with a 10% discount. Select the monthly option, click sign up now and your product will be added to the basket.   

Some of our products are set up on a slightly different subscription schedule. Like our Spoonful of Fibre 6 pack for example, is set up to renew every three months.  

We have a number of delivery options; No Rush which is £2.99. Your parcel should arrive within 3-5 working days. Speedy Delivery costs £4.99 and is a next working day delivery service. Or, if you spend more than £25 and live in the UK, we’ll ship your parcel for free. 

You can find out more about delivery under our 'Shop Online' FAQs. 

If you have any queries, you can also drop us an email on [email protected] and we’ll happily help with any changes you’d like to make.  

- A response to the amount of fibre; Troo Granola is REALLY high in fibre, at 9g per 45g bowl, so if you are eating a lot of it when you haven't been eating that much fibre before, it can cause a little discomfort. We always recommend taking it slowly to start when introducing a lot of fibre, and make sure it is accompanied with lots of water. 

 - A response to the chicory inulin; each bowl of Troo contains 6g of chicory inulin which can cause flatulence for a small percentage of people. Do you have the same issue with food like Jerusalem artichokes? Or maybe even garlic and onions? They are all from the same family. As you get used to the increase in fibre it should settle down over time.

If you need more information on this, please get in touch with us. 

You can read more about the change over on our our eco-friendly packaging page. 

Being sustainable is really important to us, but so is creating a quality product that satisfies our customers and gets to them in one piece! We’re really happy to be using home compostable film and to be in a recycled and recyclable cardboard box. 

With some other brands we conducted a large eco-study last year and discovered that one of the key barriers to people making more sustainable choices was lack of information – our new boxes give us the opportunity to explain more about our packaging to customers and help them dispose of our packaging correctly. We’re also really pleased to have the extra space to include our gut health glossary, demystifying another area of confusion. 

Most of our Troo Granola and Porridge round now come in an inner bag made from sustainable cellulose film which is an environmentally responsible alternative to traditional petroleum based plastic film. The film is derived from wood-pulp. It is certified compostable and meets European composting standards, made from GMO free renewable resources. The box is made from cardboard best recycled through the paper recycling channel.