Weight Watchers for kids and teens?

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For those that don’t know what Weight Watchers is, it is a popular weight loss program for adults.  How Weight Watchers works is you are given a certain amount of points per day along with some flex points that can be used throughout the week.  Every food you eat is given a point value (there are some free foods like certain vegetables and certain fruits).  Throughout the day, you track and add up your points until you reach your point goal and then you are done eating for the day.  Obviously, this is just a super brief over view but those are the main goals of the program.  Recently, Weight Watchers just launched a weight loss program called Kurbo, which is a program specifically for kids and teens.  
            Launching a weight loss program for kids and teens has caused some back lash.  Is it appropriate to be telling young kids to lose weight? Or is the program really just meant to teach kids how to eat healthy?  Body positivity is such a big movement right now so the fact that a company as big as Weight Watchers is now introducing an app to help younger people with weight loss is kind of surprising.  Due to these questions, I decided to look into the program myself and see what it was all about.  
I found that the program is based on a red light, yellow light, green light system.  Red light foods are typically sweets or fast food and they say they should be monitored closely or avoided, yellow light foods are lean proteins and pastas which they say should be eaten but still monitored and lastly, green light foods are fruits and veggies and they say those can be eaten whenever.  The website says the traffic light system was developed with science based journal articles at Stanford University.  Each participant is then given a “coach” who they check in with each week via face time to go over what they ate for the week and track their progress. 
So, is this an appropriate way to approach weight loss and healthy eating with kids and teens?  I believe the traffic light approach is simple and would be easy for younger people to follow.  Also, I like the fact that it isn’t too focused on calories.  I was worried this app would be a lot of calorie counting and I don’t always feel that’s the best approach because it seems that causes people to become to obsessed with what they’re eating. Due to the traffic light method being so vague, I decided to look more into the “coaches”.  I figured they would be the ones giving more intricate and specific advice so I wanted to know their qualifications and this is where the problem came in.  
There are nine coaches, however, not one of them is a registered dietitian. Six out of nine of them aren’t even in the health field…most of them were business majors.  The website claims they have training in fitness, nutrition, and behavior change but doesn’t actually say the type of training or certifications. 
Overall, it was quite frustrating to see that none of these coaches, who are giving nutrition advice, have the appropriate education to do so.  I’m hoping that the coaches keep their nutrition advice at a very basic level, and if one of the client’s needs more info on something they would refer them to a nutrition professional such as a dietitian (I’m aware that is probably not the case but wishful thinking!!)
            
If you take anything away from this post, just watch who you are taking nutrition advice from!
  
MG
https://kurbo.com/?gclsrc=aw.ds

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 10, 2019 at 5:00 PM

    MG,

    Great blog! I agree that the traffic light system is simple and easy to get across, but I do feel it is too focused on calories. The fact that none of the coaches are RDNs is honestly terrifying. It is even scarier that 6/9 of them are not even in the health care field. As upcoming RDNs, it is important that we advocate for ourselves and get the word out that we are needed in the health field..especially in examples like this program! Overall, great post!

    IB

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