Dangers of Weight Watchers’ new App for Children and Teens

Why hasn’t weight watchers failed yet when it only has a 6% success rate?  Just the opposite is happening— the company has launched a new app called Kurbo, which is geared towards children aged 8-17 that is “designed to help kids and teens reach a healthier weight”  You heard that right— children who are as young as 8 years old are in the target range for this app.  In our current society, which glorifies being thin and shames those who are fat, an app like this is the last thing we need.

The app claims that its goal is to promote health, but based on the testimonial page on the website, the main goal is definitely to lose weight; successful kids and teens are showcased on the page with a photo, their age, and a sentence listing how many pounds they’ve lost or how many points their BMI has decreased, both of which of problematic.  

BMI charts are known to be inaccurate, especially for taller or more muscular individuals, and those who are fat are not necessarily unhealthy.  In fact,  between one-third and three-quarters of fat people were metabolically healthy in terms of blood pressure, insulin resistance, and cholesterol levels.  In a study between unhealthy lean people and healthy obese people, the healthy obese group were less likely to be at risk for diabetes, coronary heart disease, strokes and mortality than the unhealthy lean people; “healthy” and “unhealthy” was determined by blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood lipids.  

But the Weight Watchers company has seemed to realize that weight loss or the act of “watching” weight isn’t the healthiest, recently deciding to shorten their name from Weight Watchers to just WW.  Maybe this can be seen as a step in the right direction, but there are still several issues with their Kurbo app and their diet cycle methodology.  

The app uses a system similar to a traffic light, gauging foods as either being in a red, yellow, or green group.  The app encourages users to track food intake and compensate for calories taken in with exercise, which places a huge burden on the child or teen using the app when, in reality, they may not have any control over the food is purchased in their house.  Many have pointed out that this type of categorization of “good” and “bad” foods and behaviors could lead to the development of unhealthy habits and potentially, even eating disorders, especially for children and teens who are still very impressionable. 

Additionally, this app could introduce kids and teens to the diet cycle of yo-yo dieting, which is harmful in the long turn and can cause individuals to fall into an unhealthy relationship with food.  This diet cycle involves restricting oneself of food, indulging in food, and then ultimately punishing oneself for doing so.  This process is one of the reasons that Weight Watchers and other dieting programs stay so successful and why two-thirds of dieters regain more weight that they lost in the first place. 

So what are parents supposed to do? First and foremost, stay away from the Kurbo app and the focus on dieting in general since it can be detrimental to health in the long term.  Second, parents should promote healthy habits in a way that doesn’t focus solely on weight because it is time to move away from the stereotype that fat individuals are automatically unhealthy.