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Our Kids Do Not Need a Weight Watchers App: A registered dietitian explains why you should never put your child on a diet.
By Christy Harrison
Weight Watchers — now rebranded as WW — has introduced an app called Kurbo, for children 8 to 17 years old. As a registered dietitian who specializes in helping people recover from disordered eating, I strongly recommend that parents keep this new tool — and any weight-loss program — away from their children.
Our society is unfair and cruel to people who are in larger bodies, so I can empathize with parents who might believe their child needs to lose weight, and with any child who wants to. Unfortunately, attempts to shrink a child’s body are likely to be both ineffective and harmful to physical and mental health.
Over the last 60 years, numerous studies have shown that among people who lose weight, more than 90 percent gain it back over the long run. For example, a 2000 study of adults 20 to 45 found that less than 5 percent lost weight and kept it off long term. And a 2015 study of more than 176,000 higher-weight people age 20 and older found that 95 percent to 98 percent of those who lost weight gained back all of it (or more) within five years. A 2007 review of the scientific evidence found that most people likely gained back more.
Excerpt from the site: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/18/opinion/weightwatcherskids.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Hom epage.
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