How the impact of the weight watchers app is putting generation Z at risk.
Recently world wide diet company Weight Watchers released a new app catered towards children. Kurbo is aimed at children aged between 8 and 16, and a statement from the company claims that it helps them to build ‘healthy habits for life’.
Granted, not everyone who diets has developed a formal eating disorder, BUT more than half of us have DISORDER EATING HABITS. There’s a difference, but the line can be thin.
Weight Watchers thrives and makes money off weight loss and encourages the consumption of their products, and attendance to their ‘classes’ in order to do so. It feeds off insecurities just to make a profit, and now their targetting a whole new generation of potential dieters. A new generation that they can shape and mold into weight-obsessed consumers.
Not only are Weight Watchers cashing in on a vulnerable group of people, but children who use the app aren’t monitored by health professionals. Nor do parents have any control over what their children see on Kurbo. This leaves them open to competitive dieting and ‘thinspo.’
It’s fine if you’re an adult. You’re cognitively developed and it’s assumed that you’re within your right mind. Adults can freely buy into the toxicity of diet culture because they’re old enough to know better. BUT it’s not ok to do this to children. I don’t care if they’re 8 and a little chubby, they’ll grow out of it. They’re kids, puppy fat is a thing and so are growth spurts. Exercise and eating healthy a viable option without having to track every calorie in and out.
By allowing children to use an app like Kurbo you’re;
Various eating disorder awareness groups, bloggers and influencers have been expressing their valid outrage across social media since the release earlier this week.
NEDA, The National Eating Disorder Association, released an official statement in which they express their concern for the future of the children using Kurbo.
“Asking kids to closely monitor and self-report everything they eat through an app with no in-person monitoring by a medical professional presents grave risks, including eating disorders, disordered eating and a potential lifetime of weight cycling and poor body image.”
NEDA – National Eating Disorder Association.
Mental health and recovery blogger, Cara Lisette, has also released a blog post expressing her outrage. Having suffered from an eating disorder herself, Cara knows all too well the impacts of diet culture.
Your app, Kurbo, is poison to young minds. You deny that it uses calorie counting, which may be true, but you continue to put foods into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ camps with your colour coded system. Your own website states: we want you to count every food you put in your body. This isn’t normal. This is not how ‘normal’ people eat. Our lives shouldn’t be governed by numbers or colours or whatever system is being used to achieve the same outcome: separating foods into ‘good’ or ‘bad’. You have used before and after photos of a child, to advertise their weight loss. That disgusts me.
Cara Lisette – Dear Weight Watchers.
Without diet culture companies such as Weight Watchers would be redundant. Their products and services are only maintained because the majority of the world has been indoctrinated into believing that their bodies aren’t good enough. If you don’t resemble the woman in the magazine, then you’re doing something wrong. In order to fix that, you diet. You buy the Weight Watchers branded meals, you starve yourself, you pay the money into the pyramid scheme and nine times out of ten you end up heavier than you did at the beginning.
You can only starve your body of essential nutrients and cravings for so long before you give in. It leads to a cycle of binging and dieting that never ends. In some cases, it evolves into full-blown anorexia or bulimia, which only succeeds in creating a whole new world of trouble.
Due to the attention of my audio rant, I wanted to keep this post short. It should also be noted that this is opinion based, and as opinions go I’d love to know yours.
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This is horrific.
We build healthy habits through education and research, (because sometimes scientists get it wrong), not through companies playing to fears and charging for the 'priviledge'.
And boy are WW charging for the privilege! $69 a month? Who would even pay that!?
This makes me mad, but I’m happy you used your platform - as many have been doing - to express your opposition. Who thought this was a good idea? Something you said at the end made me wonder - is it the body positivity movement that’s motivated them to target kids? Because if kids learn to love themselves no matter what, they can’t make money off them. It’s vile whatever the motivation though...
The CEO of WW obviously saw the gap in the market and $$ signs appeared before their eyes. If they were going with the body positivity movement as an influence, then they've gone about it the wrong way. I'm all for teaching kids about healthy eating, but moderation is key. And without proper guidance, it's going to be so easy for kids to fall victim to body comparison, and skipping/abusing meals.
Oh absolutely! And sorry, think I might have phrased my initial comment wrong - I meant more that maybe they felt threatened by the body positive movement and therefore wanted to do this to stop it (e.g. if weight stops being seen as such a major factor in beauty, then dieting stops being normal, and they lose out - hence, get them while they’re young). Didn’t mean that this app was positive in any way!!
Ah I see what you mean now and you are totally right! They probably did feel threatened.
It’s not only weight watchers though! All these horrible, predatory MLM companies claiming to help you lose weight have to stop too. I hate seeing friends sell that horrible stuff!!
Same! I would never endorse a company like that. Shakes are the worst thing in the world because once you start eating normally again, you put on more than you weighed before.
There are soooooo many better ways to teach kids healthy eating habits. If we start with stuff like this when kids are young then it's just asking f for a multitude of issues as they get older
Thank you for reading and commenting. As you can tell, I totally agree. Diet culture teaches toxic ideals that ultimately lead to a lifetime of yo-yoing.
I have huge opinions on this myself - and sadly I haven't managed to listen to your podcast yet (I had to download spotify on my phone and I've not yet got back to it).
The saddest thing is that it is known that dieting as a child is more likely to lead to obesity as an adult.
Obviously WW concern is their profit margins and not the health of a nation, but really I believe that government should have stepped in here and said no. While size is no indicator of health, yoyo dieting damages your health.
Yo-Yo dieting has been my whole life. I'm either eating 'normally' but demonizing food in my head, or I'm outwardly avoiding ALL food. There is no in between, and if there is I don't remember it. I can't remember a time when dieting and calories haven't been in my life. Even as a child. It's damaging, so much so that it's leading many people down the dieting path, and they're never coming back.
Same babe, same. I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware that I was bigger than my peer group or that my mother didn't call me fat either :-(
I think that's what makes me most sad, I've forgotten the exact stat on how many 9yo have tried to diet but I think that finding and downloading this app is going to be because parents encourage it at the younger end of the scale. Or what worries me more is if school nurses start to encourage it.
My favourite thing about my niece is that my sister has tried so hard to shield her from diet culture and she literally does not have the same morality for food that we do. For her it's a case of "these are snacks we can always have and these are snacks we can only have once a day" (generally once a day are the expensive snacks). She's also got no concept of one size being better than another. When she first saw me when I'd dropped from obese to underweight her only comment was how nice the colour of my dress was. Even now, all she compares is height.
I so hope that she can hold onto the healthier attitude as she starts secondary school and isn't influenced negatively by her peers.
My sisters kids have also been allowed to be full at any point. Or hungry at any point and (mostly) have food then. (if dinner is in ten minutes then they can start on crunchy veggies but y'know) and it's fascinating watching both my niece and nephew being in tune with their bodies and what they want and need.
Your sister is doing a great job trying to keep her kids away from diet culture. It must be so hard though because it's everywhere. Schools, doctors offices etc.
It is hard, but when the kids came home from school talking about calories bc they'd been taught about calories in food (insert eyeroll) we had a conversation about how a calorie just means that when burnt it raised the temperature of water from 16-17 degrees and that it didn't completely translate to what happens in our bodies and not to worry about it.
I've actually not been aware of them asking about or worrying about calories since. (this was a few years ago - I think they were around 5 and 7 - it was when I was still co-parenting from a distance)
I was taught about calories from a young age too, but I didn't have the figures on hand to try and dispell the BS I was taught. A calorie is, essentially, a unit of energy that our body needs in order to function. Much like how a remote control needs batteries, calories are our batteries, in a way. It's a nicer way to think of it than 'calories make us fat'.
Absolutely - we talked about how foods give us energy and that's good so we can run and play too.
It's like teaching them at school that they should "eat a rainbow" without thinking about the economics of the families and if they can even afford it.
It was a huge financial hit to my sister when her kids both aged out of the "healthy start" vouchers after turning 5 because at one point she was getting 3 sets - and £15 a week goes a long way when it's restricted to milk, bread, fruit, and veg!
I'm certain that a cheaper way of dealing with the growing health concerns of the nation would be to just give everybody a £5 healthy start voucher a week!
I agree with you. The brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25. People that young are at risk for issues when they use an app for weight loss. They shouldn’t even have to worry about weight. Their focus should be having fun. Kids are already at risk of developing unhealthy weight habits with billboards showing what beauty should be like. It does teach kids to see weight as a competition rather than loving their bodies.
Dieting at any age I feel like teaches bad habits and can turn into an eating disorder. You should only use a diet program if you already love your body and your goal is to only lose a few pounds.
Healthy habits should be taught from a child’s parent and not weight watchers.
Exactly. Very well said, Michelle. There is a way to eat healthy without food and calories taking over. There is a line. Moderation is key, while Weight Watchers and diet culture teach absence of 'bad food'.
Thank you so much for stopping in and reading.
Thank you for addressing this! This is not the first post I have seen in regards to this app being made available. I think that we need to spend more time teaching our children about making healthy choices and how to embrace all foods. It is hard enough as adults to try and navigate all the differing information and research that is coming around, why should children when they already have so much to try and figure out have to be burdened by this. Kids should be able to have fun, try lots of different things and learn to listen to their bodies. Not be shamed, told that something is bad or good (labeling) foods or be told to restrict or be denied food groups. Thank you for using this space to help promote "living healthy and being the best you can be!"
Thank you so much for reading. I know many other blogs have addressed it, but it only felt right to follow suit because this is primarily a recovery blog.
Companies like this are so awful. Let kids be kids! Healthy eating habits should be something that parents show their kids by example, not through an app that demonizes certain foods. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for stopping in and reading.
Thanks for posting that. I totally agree, WW is wrong. I have a 13 yr.old granddaughter and I do not want her to buy into the'I must look a certain way" culture. Unfortunately, it is everywhere and WW just made it worse.
You're right, it's everywhere and hard to avoid. Thank you for reading.
I completely agree with you, they are a disgusting company who only want these poor kids to spend the rest of their lives dieting and giving them money. Eating disorders are so serious, that to create something knowing it runs the risk of having that effect on people is beyond me
They know perfectly well what they're doing, they just see the $$ signs. Thank you so much for stopping by and reading.