Weight Watchers rebranded last year to “WW”, which was smart branding on their part because old school diets such as Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem are no longer as popular as they once were. Now, we are sold the idea that we can be better, more moral people not by “dieting” but by “eating clean” or “eating whole”, but we fail to see that these “lifestyles” are another version of a diet repackaged and tied up with a new, more green bow.
What better way to attract us millennials, the lovers of environmentalism, yoga, & self-care, than by convincing us that drinking a green juice or eating an avocado toast, will bring us closer to enlightenment (or at least the “yoga body” that makes people think we look enlightened). And through this all, some company somewhere is making a lot of money. The diet industry was projected to be worth $70 billion in 2018 and that amount is only projected to keep rising with time.
Speaking of companies looking to make money off our country’s obsession with weight loss, WW has created a new weight loss app for children, called Kurbo.
While I hate that adults have to struggle with diet culture, thinking about young kids being exposed to a weight loss app like Kurbo makes me very, very sad.
As a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, I can tell you that I have been receiving more and more requests to see kids, ages 12 and under, who are struggling with eating disorders of their own. I have had the experience of visiting a treatment center and seeing a child, that could not have been more than 10 years old, sitting in the audience of my presentation.
If you’re unfamiliar with eating disorder treatment, when a person has an eating disorder that is appropriate for a residential or inpatient level of care, that means that person has to live at the facility 24/7. For a child, this means that they have to spend the night, every night, away from their parents, their siblings, their family pet, their favorite books and blanket and live instead with the other patients and staff at the treatment center. Of course, parents and families can visit, but when I think about how scared I was to even go to summer camp as a kid, I can only imagine how terrifying it must be for a young child to have to go to treatment.
Do you know where most eating disorders start? They start with a diet. Not all dieters develop eating disorders, but for the people that might be genetically predisposed or predisposed via their environment, a simple diet can trigger the thought process that develops into an eating disorder. So why would we sign our children up for a weight loss app that introduces them to the thoughts and behaviors associated with eating disorders? Why would we pay $69 a month for our children to have online coaching to learn what foods are “good” and “bad”, or in Kurbo’s case “yellow”, “red” and “green”?
I do not expect diet culture to go away any time soon. We can bet that our children will hear about which foods are “good” or “bad” even if we refrain from using that language in our own households. If we want our children to learn to have a healthy relationship with food, why not encourage them to learn instead about tuning into their bodies. We can help them figure out what types of foods make their bodies feel good, that give them energy to play and study and all that good stuff that comes with childhood. And most importantly, why not teach our children that they are loved regardless of what they look like and help them build the self-confidence they need to live in this image-focused world? I do not want another company to profit off our children feeling bad about themselves.
To learn more about the controversy surrounding the Kurbo app, check out this article from Refinery29:https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/08/240564/ww-weight-watchers-kids-diet-program-kurbo-controversy
To learn more about what to do if you are afraid your child is going to be fat, see this blog by eating disorder expert, Beth Mayer, LICSW: https://more-love.org/2017/02/24/for-parents-who-are-afraid-that-their-kid-is-going-to-be-fat-an-interview-with-beth-mayer/