Weight Watchers & # 39; Kurbo Sells Diets To Children From The Age Of Eight

Do your homework! Clean up your room! Count your Weight Watchers points?

Weight Watchers, now known as WW, launched this week a new application called WW, called Kurbo, which "helps children and adolescents aged 8 to 17 reach a healthy weight." Last year, WW acquired Kurbo, a digital health start-up whose system is based on the pediatric obesity program of Stanford University.

Teens follow their food in Kurbo's free app. A green, yellow or red light classifies what they eat and the amount of food they eat. They can also consult a digital coach for a fee starting at $ 69 per month.

"It's a scientifically proven way to get kids to eat healthier and move more, so we're excited to share it in as many hands as we can," said WW Scientific Director Gary. Foster, at CNBC.

Some WW loyalists applaud the movement, claiming that society has transformed their lives and hope that it will also transform the lives of children. But nutritionists fear that Kurbo will promote an unhealthy relationship with food during a particularly impressionable period.

"I really appreciate the idea that parents enroll their children in a generally well-meaning manner, but what we do know is that worry about the food and the justice that reign around it does not create healthy relationships with food, "said Anna Sweeney, dietician. and owner of Whole Life Nutrition Counseling in Concord, Massachusetts. "It does not leave people feeling good or competent to eat."

When you sign up for Kurbo, you enter your name, your height, your weight and your sex. You then choose a goal: eat healthier, lose weight, make parents happy, become stronger and in better shape, have more energy, increase my self-confidence or feel better about my clothes.

Abby Langer, a dietitian who owns her own practice in Toronto, Canada, said she wanted to "have some fun" when she heard that "making parents happy" was an option. Foster said that Kurbo was supposed to be a "family approach" and that parents should not choose a single child. Instead, he said parents should give the example and involve the whole family.

"Overweight kids know that they are overweight and already feel bad about it," Langer said. "Giving this app to a child is like saying that there is something wrong with you."

Once you have selected a goal, you determine its importance on a scale from 0 "not important" to ten "super important" and trust that you can reach your goal from 0 "not sure" to up to to "super confident."

Your profile page shows your body mass index (BMI), a formula based on your weight and height. You can check the number of green, yellow and red foods that you have consumed during the week. Although that does not quite matter, it's not that far.

Foster rejects the idea that Kurbo is a diet, which he defines as a program like keto or paleo that qualifies some foods as bad and encourages people to avoid them. Diets, he said, lead to a change in behavior in the short term, while WW focuses on establishing healthy habits.

Linda Tucker, body image and food coach, thinks that the lighting system is "problematic" because it "loses some nuance". It includes the intention to make things simple. Kurbo's program does not require kids to track calories or fat, but "they always say these foods are better than these foods without context."

"This is not realistic, and it's not a healthy way to teach food to anyone, especially children," said Tucker, who owns his own practice in Portland, Texas. l & # 39; Oregon.

Some WW members praised the company for putting in place a program to help children and adolescents.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 13.7 million American children and adolescents – nearly one-fifth – are obese. The CDC defines obesity as a BMI equal to or greater than the 95th percentile for the sex and age group of the child. A 10-year-old boy weighing 102 pounds and measuring 4 feet 8 inches would be considered obese.

Even this remains controversial, with some health professionals arguing that BMI is an arbitrary and inaccurate measure. However, people considered obese are at higher risk for conditions such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, according to the CDC.

"In fact, the data clearly indicates that we have a scientific solution to help children struggling with overweight and obesity, and we can do it very well with our digital app," Foster said. .

The Kurbo website features "success stories" showing before-and-after images, as well as the number of kilos lost by users. Foster said that the WW team had heard about parents and teens who wanted to see pictures of children "that were successful". He said the photos are supposed to be "inspiring". Some do not agree.

"If Kurbo wants to create a healthy body image and healthy habits for teens, I'm very supportive of that," Tucker said. "The problem is that when you introduce the idea of ​​losing weight, everything becomes a poison."

Kurbo does not rely on traditional health care experts. Its coaches include graduates in economics, tourism management and communications, to which nutritionists are reluctant. Foster said Kurbo's coaches are "highly trained and very effective".

"If we want to live our goal of making well-being accessible to all and do it outside of a university medical center, we will not be able to hire pediatricians, dieticians, exercise physiologists or psychologists, "he said. "What we do well is take the science and adapt it, measure the impact to make sure we live up to our goal."