Obesity: An Alternative Perspective

The same problem: Obesity. However till recently this was what was preferred in Mauratania:

NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA – Big has long been considered beautiful in Mauritania. But now, a generation of women are abandoning an ancient practice to fatten up - and some are even redefining beauty to put their health first.

It's not a lifetime spent scoffing junk food and slurping fizzy drinks that's to blame for obesity here; rather, a tradition as old as the desert: gavage.

n the tree-lined boulevards of Paris, the French word describes the process of fattening up geese to produce foie gras. On the sand-blanketed streets of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, it describes the process of forcibly funneling sweetened milk and millet porridge down the throats of young girls. In this vast nomadic nation, thin women are an admission of poverty. Voluptuous wives and daughters, by contrast, are displays of a man's wealth, and that's where force-feeding comes in. Read on