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World’s Fattest Girl Exceeds 200 Pounds at Age 6
Suman Khatun begs her neighbors for food after each meal at home
It seems there is no shortage of stories on people trying to get in the Guinness Book of World Records. But when you actually thumb through the book, many of the achievements are dubious distinctions rather than accomplishments to be proud of, to be sure.
There is likely a new entry in the book that fits into the former rather than the latter. A little girl in West Bengal, India, has been labeled the world’s fattest girl. At 3’5” tall, Suman Khatun, 6, weighs 201 pounds. Her menu each week is enough to feed her entire village — literally.
The story is a sad one: Her father spends his weekly salary just to feed her, while the rest of their family often goes hungry. When she’s done eating she demands food from the neighbors.
A typical lunch consists of two giant plates of rice, two bowls of fried fish, two fried eggs and a couple of omelets. She also eats two breakfasts of biscuits, bananas, rice and eggs. If her parents refuse her food, she rolls on the floor crying and eats mud, according to the UK’s Daily Mail.
Her mom said, “She’s hungry all the time and all she does is cry. I don’t like seeing my daughter so sad so I feed her. What am I meant to do?”
Her weight is now five times more than the average for her age, although Suman was born at a healthy weight. It took a downhill turn when she began drinking milk.
Her dad said milk is expensive in India, so he couldn’t afford to buy her as much as she demanded as a baby. As a result, he crushed up grains in the hopes they would fill her.
Not helping matters? Suman spends her days in front of the TV or watching her sister play with friends. She doesn’t exercise herself because she becomes exhausted after walking for more than a minute.
Suman’s doctor says her parents aren’t taking her situation seriously enough and worries she could die of cardiac arrest in the near future.
Her parents, however, say their hands are tied.
“If she cries a lot, she gets ill and bleeds through her nose, which is even worse. So we try to keep her happy and provide her with whatever she wants. Food makes her happy,” her mom said.
Sad, sad, sad.
Image: Creative Commons
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3 Comments
L. commented on May 17 11 at 12:02 pmI think it’s sad that no doctor has yet realized that she probably has Pradar-Willi Syndrome…. An endocrine disease that causes children to compulsively overeat – they have no control. It can be treated. Perhaps with this exposure, she will finally get the help that she needs.
LindaTOO commented on May 17 11 at 1:35 pmSounds like Prader-Willi.
Mary commented on May 18 11 at 2:48 pmBased on the description (constant desire to eat, low muscle tone, anxiety when denied food), it sounds like Prader-Willi syndrome. So sad, because that can be really difficult to treat even when parents have a whole range of resources available to them, and I doubt that these parents do.
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