Recently, the fitness app Noom has been roasted (like that pork rib it doesn’t want you to eat) all over social media for hiring untrained “health coaches” and mishandling clients with eating disorders. Even though the company was founded in 2008, it really started to take off during the pandemic, when many of us were worried about staying active and not overeating. Since then, Noom has advertised itself as a woke “digital health” company that uses coaching and customized psychology to change our harmful food habits. Its recent advertising, however, makes it look like an elaborate fat-shaming scheme.
This is how the app works: It asks you a series of questions and creates a personalized diet plan, pairs you with a “health coach” and generates a psychological theory and timeline for your weight loss, according to the Financial Times, all for $60 a month. This theory might as well be called a Trauma Fabricator, because the app apparently psychoanalyzes you and your childhood memories to determine where your unhealthy relationship with food is rooted. Their most recent commercials brag about this feature.
