In 1990, Jenny Craig herself appeared in a commercial for her then-new diet plan of the same name. Sitting against a light blurred background in a dark purple blouse, she smiles warmly as she says, “I think everyone — everyone wants to lose weight quickly and easily.”
She goes on to tease the benefits of the program, albeit a little vaguely.
“You need that one-on-one support and also the group support,” she said. “And the lifestyle classes are very important… When we feel like we’ve really succeeded, customers tell us, ‘I don’t remember eating any differently.'”
As a kid of the ’90s, these commercials were a part of my daily media consumption, as were ads for products like SlimFast and Special K, and competing weight-loss programs like Weight Watchers and Atkins.
But now, nearly 33 years later, the company has announced it will be closing “due to its inability to secure additional funding,” according to an email obtained by NBC News on Tuesday.
According to the publication, the company operated approximately 500 company-owned and franchised stores across the United States and Canada; It currently employs more than 1,000 people, ranging from corporate employees to hourly workers at the center. Two of those company employees told NBC they expect the company to file for bankruptcy by the end of the week.
This isn’t because of a sudden cultural lack of interest in weight loss. According to a 2023 survey commissioned by Nutrisystem (who, to be honest, seem to have a vested interest in the subject) of Americans who have tried to lose weight at some point in their life, 95% have tried , to decline within the period past five years. Forty-four percent of respondents actually gained 21 pounds or more during this period.
Figures from the Center for Disease Control are a little less recent or drastic, but still show that between 2013 and 2016, almost half — 49.1% — of adults had attempted to lose weight in the past 12 months. Some of these people may have tried to lose weight under a doctor’s guidance for a specific health issue, but there’s a large, large percentage who try for other reasons.
Ignoring for a brief moment the toxicity of food culture and the insidious way its tentacles touch everything from pharmaceuticals to social media marketing (trust me, we’ll get to that), the audience for weight loss programs is obvious still there . So why couldn’t Jenny Craig and her promise to “make weight loss easier with great-tasting food, unparalleled support, and the latest science-backed strategies” crack it in a new decade of dieting?
I think that’s in large part because the way we talk about weight loss has changed steadily over the past 30 years. Terms like “body positivity” and “body neutrality” have entered the cultural lexicon and have done a world of good to educate the general public about how real, measurable health can come at any size. This movement has, of course, faced some pretty odious opposition, particularly aimed at celebrities like Lizzo and Ashley Graham getting their messages out.
Despite all the work we’ve done as a society to recognize that obesity is not a moral failing, we still view thinness as a moral good.
Despite all the work we’ve done as a society to recognize that obesity is not a moral failing, in a display of tremendous collective dissonance, we still regard thinness as a moral good. While it’s not said – and it often is – it’s visible all around us, from Tinder profiles looking for “exclusively sporty” partners, to the fat best friend’s TV picture, to movies like Brittany Runs a marathon”.
Put another way, now realize there are many Americans whose dirty secret is that they still want to lose weight; they just don’t necessarily want to admit it. That’s where Jenny Craig’s program as it currently exists was unsustainable — and where more modern, predatory companies can come up with superficial messages that satisfy that shared desire, when in fact selling many of the same core beliefs.
Jenny Craig is a hybrid weight-loss program that combines in-person or online consultations and weigh-ins, depending on the package purchased, with a menu of nearly 100 frozen, pre-packaged meals that are delivered to customers’ homes. From the start it is clear that the program is a real commitment. Customers are discouraged from cooking at home until they are at least halfway through their weight loss goal. Then they are allowed to prepare some meals at home. Once customers reach their goal weight, they spend four weeks transitioning to home-cooked meals.
While some users have had success with Jenny Craig, the program has also been fraught with problems. According to a 2023 report by Forbes, the meal plan last cost between $97.93 and $203 per week, meaning some users were essentially making another rental payment to afford the plan, which is different from the rest required groceries not taken into account of the household.
Additionally, most plans themselves came down to or around 1200 calories, which reporter Scaachi Koul wrote in 2021, “is, according to most nutritionists or food experts, a restrictive, unsustainable, likely unhealthy diet for any adult woman.” Jamie Nadeau, a nutritionist, told Buzzfeed News that the level of calorie restriction is actually only enough if you’re an “80-pound dog or toddler.”
As Koul writes, most regimented diet programs, like Weight Watchers, are similarly based on a 1,200-calorie intake, just hidden behind a “points” system so it doesn’t feel like counting calories. However, even Weight Watchers has rebranded itself to less emphasize the “weight” in their name; Now the company only goes through WW.
Similarly, as of August 2022, the creators of the South Beach Diet, another original competitor to Jenny Craig’s, announced that the company was taking “a break” from home delivery of frozen diet meals and a la carte groceries, and the company instead recommends people visit the blog site The Palm. So what takes the place of these diet industry veterans as they reinvent themselves?
You end up with programs like Noom. In the original marketing for the app, potential customers were told they would learn to “stop dieting” because the program instead focused on cultivating daily behavior changes for long-term weight loss. Users receive articles and quizzes every day to test their new knowledge.
As someone who’s struggled with an eating disorder since I was young, I also found myself drawn into this specific promise of Noom for a time
I had several friends who all founded Noom together to “retrain their brains” in terms of how they think about food. It wasn’t about losing weight or starting another crash diet. This was about improving the relationship between mind and body; and while companies talking about weight loss are now seen as inappropriate, or at least kind of inappropriate, it’s totally hip to talk about client mental health -teen, I also found myself sucked into that particular Noom promise for a while .)
But as many health experts were quick to point out, Noom is still a diet. For all the talk of being different from the other programs out there, all it does is hide calorie counting behind a new $70-a-month labeling system. Instead of dots, it’s color-coded: there are orange, yellow, and green foods. Green foods have the lowest calorie density, while orange foods have the most.
Again, many people have reported success using it, but health experts say that for some of their customers, the “psychological lessons” Noom claims to teach aren’t the ultimate takeaway.
“I’ve had several clients switch to me from Noom because of the extreme nutrition culture it can encourage and the extremely low calorie intake that can encourage a restriction cycle,” Crystal Scott, a registered dietitian and nutritionist, told Women’s Health in April. “The color-coded foods can [trigger] an unhealthy relationship with food.”
Then, in the slightly shadier — but more expensive — corner of the diet industry, there are weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.
As Salon Senior Writer Nicole Karlis reported in March, Ozempic is typically marketed as a diabetes drug and is officially known as Semaglutide. Semaglutide can help with obesity and diabetes because it acts on GLP-1 receptors, which control blood sugar. dr Ahmet Ergin, founder and entrepreneur of SugarMD, told Salon that Ozempic acts as a “gastrointestinal hormone mimic” by manufacturing the hormones that signal appetite or a feeling of fullness.”
Several celebrities, including Elon Musk, have credited the drug with their weight loss — but even those who have, speak of it with an almost dismissive wave of the hand. “Everyone’s on Ozempic,” comedian Chelsea Handler said in January. “My antiaging doctor just hands it out to everyone.” As Karlis reported, in recounting her own experience with the drug, Handler claimed that she “didn’t even know” she was taking it.
“Everyone is on Ozempic.”
Handler’s description of how to get Ozempic reinforces two big ideas: The first is that many of the celebrities that Americans expect to have the ideal body type on a day-to-day basis are actually maintaining that physique by taking medication. The second point is that these celebrities want to keep this part of their fitness and nutrition regimen a secret because, again, thinness is viewed as a moral good, although one that we’re relentlessly culturally conditioned to believe should be the natural standard.
Why? So that companies can continue to exploit the insecurities that come with a body you keep being told isn’t ideal.
Jenny Craig’s leadership has yet to comment on the company’s plans for a rebrand or relaunch, if any. However, they told employees in an email that “the next phase of our business is beginning to evolve with the changing landscape of today’s consumer.” Like many other businesses, we are currently in the transition from a brick-and-mortar retail store to a customer-friendly, e-commerce-centric model. We will share more details in the coming weeks as our plans materialize.”
Personally, I think it’s only a matter of time before Jenny Craig comes back — although I expect the term “diet” will be dropped from her news feeds when it does return.
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