Where obesity is prized Associated Press
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - Mey Mint struggles to carry her weight up the flight of stairs, her thighs shaking with each step. It will take several minutes for the 50-year-old to catch her breath, air hissing painfully in and out of her chest.
Her rippling flesh is not the result of careless overeating, though, but rather of a tradition.
In Mauritania, to make a girl big and plump, 'gavage' - a borrowed French word from the practice of fattening geese for foie gras - starts early. Obesity has long been the ideal of beauty, signaling a family's wealth in a land repeatedly wracked by drought.
Mint was 4 when her family began to force her to drink 14 gallons of camel's milk a day. When she vomited, she was beaten.
By the time Mint was 10, she could no longer run. Unconcerned, her proud mother delighted in measuring the loops of fat hanging under her daughter's arms.
"My mother thinks she made me beautiful. But she made me sick," says Mint, who suffers from weight-related illnesses including diabetes and heart disease.
To end the brutal feeding practices, the government has launched a TV and radio campaign highlighting the health risks of obesity to reduce the abuse.
Only one in 10 women under the age of 19 has been force-fed, compared with a third of women 40 or older, according to a survey conducted by the National Office of Statistics in 2001, the most recent available. *
Obesity 
That would be complete child abuse where we live, and that child would be ripped from her parents.
I want to go there and torture the parents.
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