YouTube wants to tighten protection for young people – but has forgotten this content

Youtube restricts recommendations on body weight and fitness – what’s missing here?

Fewer videos that idealize an unrealistic body image will be recommended to young people on YouTube. YouTube will therefore develop additional protections for content recommendations that could be problematic for some young people if viewed repeatedly.

These categories include content that compares physical characteristics and idealizes physical appearance, fitness or body weight. Unfortunately, the video watchdogs have forgotten essential content that drives thousands of users crazy every day: Nutritional recommendations, better-eating hypes and “great tips for healthy eating” from influencers of all kindsBut this is exactly where things need to be accelerated!

Uwe Knop, born in 1972, is a qualified nutritionist, author and speaker for lectures at professional associations, companies and medical training courses. His new book
“FINALLY EATING RIGHT” was published in August 2024.

Why would it be advisable to limit nutritional advice?

It’s simple: everyone now thinks they’re a nutrition expert – and so all sorts of B-list celebrities, influencers and coaches who aren’t experts in the field post their self-invented golden rules for perfect nutrition that make you healthy and slim – and everyone has different ones in order to position themselves uniquely, generate clicks – and make money, because that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.

But who of the myriad of self-selected social media nutrition professionals has studied and practiced nutritional science or nutritional medicine? Certainly very few, the number is probably in the thousandths range. This is also because there are neither controls nor protected designations, such as nutritionist.

Can anyone really call themselves a nutritionist, expert or coach?

Yes, if you want to be a nutritionist, then nail a sign to your door tomorrow saying you are a coach and expert in healthy eating and you can advise people.

The term nutritionist is not protected, anyone can use it, regardless of what they know and can do – or better not white and not Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and the like should put a stop to this proliferation of incompetent self-selected nutritionists.

My suggestion: As a first step, for example, everyone who posts nutritional tips and provides commercial advice must prove where their expertise in this area comes from. And everyone who has studied nutritional science or nutritional medicine must have a corresponding badge. Anyone who cannot prove anything will be prohibited from providing nutritional coaching until proof of their expertise is available.

Do I even need nutritional tips?

No. If you are healthy and have a good body image, you only need one thing: complete confidence in yourself. Simply finally eat properly (again) Learning is basically very simple: you have to trust in the power of your intuition and the strength of your ethics. Intuition provides the unique wisdom of your own body, ethics provides the wisdom of knowledge.