Kurbo by WW (Weight Watchers)

This app is a step in the right direction. It’s more important than ever to give kids a healthy and nutritious foundation. Thank you for this in-depth and well made app! We need this more than ever. Many of the people leaving one star reviews don’t even have kids to begin with. Just think: we can teach our kids healthy habits so they won’t have to diet as adults. Letting your child balloon in size and eat unhealthy without constraint is child cruelty. Most 3 year olds don’t know the difference between health and unhealthy. They just know that skittles taste good and look cool. Please, give this app a chance and respect your children and others. Just because you don’t want to eat healthy doesn’t mean you should force that on others. I had an eating disorder when I became a teenager and can say, with full confidence, this app would’ve saved me. There’s no calories, just a clean focus on nutrition and overall health. 10/10 would recommend.

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Please please please do not use this app or encourage your children to use this app. When seeing this app release, I was outraged. I paused, calmed down, opened my mind and tried the app for myself. My conclusion is this app is dangerous, propagates weight stigma, encourages a diet mentality and could lead to a poor relationship with food and food intake, disordered eating, or eating disorders. I am in eating disorder recovery, and I confidently say this app would have been devastating to me, had I found it when I was young or in my disorder. A healthy relationship with food can not be obtained, when you look at food as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, green or red. Labeling food and controlling intake at this minute level is a breeding ground for a disordered relationship with food. Teach your kids that food is food, that their health is not directly related to their weight. Teach them to eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. Teach them talk about what they are feeling, recognize emotion, and healthy outlets for emotions and movement. Show them that they don’t have to live by color categorized foods, a diet and exercise plan, a burn to earn mentality or a number on a scale. And for the love of all things good in this world do not teach them that raisins, Apple juice, pistachios, chocolate milk and peanut butter are food to be afraid of! (All red foods in the app - that according to my plan I was only allowed to have 5 of).

I’m trying to keep track of my 5-year-old’s nutrition and weight, as she was classified as overweight at her last appointment. Setting up the app as a parent, I created her profile but it automatically assigned her my last name even though she has her dad’s last name, and it just named her “Kid1”. I don’t know if I missed something when I made her profile, but regardless, there is no way for me to edit her name. I thought perhaps logging onto the site on a computer would let me edit it, but it doesn’t. So now I’m stuck with a profile that says “Kid1”, no buttons that allow me to delete or add profiles, and a clunky user interface with very limited options, which would be fine for a kid using the app but which isn’t so great for the adult trying to use it. I have used WW off and on, and since Kurbo is an offshoot of WW, you’d think the app would be up to speed, but the WW app is light years ahead. The concept of this app is wonderful. The app layout and features is severely lacking and until it is updated, I will have to find something else to help me track my daughter’s nutrition.

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We have decades of evidence suggesting that dieting behavior is the most powerful predictor of developing at eating disorders / disordered eating behavior. Dieting behavior also predicts higher weight and health concerns that have been linked to weight instability/ weight cycling. This app encourages kids as young as 8 to engage in harmful behaviors that are more likely than not to lead to ill health-mental and physical- for a lifetime. The food: Why is skinless chicken a “yellow” food? What about whole grain bread? Almonds?! What, exactly, do you then propose a child eat?! The “motivation”: If a child selects the option to engage in this diet to “make their parents happy,” it should RED FLAG them. Maybe even connect them to a hotline to report the psychological abuse they’re enduring. ANYTHING BUT allowing them to continue the diet. The lies: WW has written boldfaced lies in its FAQ page. The app is not safe. It directly contradicts position statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical and research groups about the harms of child dieting. Parents, please listen to us, the MDs and PhDs who have spent decades rigorously studying this issue. Do not use this app, and please do not allow your children and teens with tech access to use it on their own.

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This app promotes negative body image, fatphobia, and disordered eating + eating disorders in youth. Parents: let you children know that you love them, spend time with them, hug and cuddle them, provide them with a wide variety of foods to eat (including fruits, veggies, grains, proteins, starches, sugars, whole foods, processed foods, etc.), and encourage them to listen to the hunger and fullness cues their bodies send them. Remind your kids that food will always be available to them but that they can eat something when they’re craving it and that their body is healthy for sending signals of what it needs (hunger/fullness cues and cravings). Restricting your child’s food intake leads the body to respond as if it’s in famine, which will lead to binge eating, feelings of insecurity and body insecurity, and weight GAIN. If your fear is that your child will gain weight by being unrestricted, 1st: examine your personal fatphobia and discriminatory mentality; 2nd: read Health at Every Size by Dr. Linda Bacon; 3rd: your fatphobia aside, do NOT allow your child to download this app, because restriction literally causes more weight gain, which is what you didn’t want in the first place.