Photo Courtesy of Riccardo Parretti.
Known as leblouh, the age-old tradition of fattening young girls has been a Mauritanian custom for centuries. The complete opposite of US culture, women in Mauritania begin feeling the pressure to be overweight at an extremely young age.
Derived from Moorish beliefs, the people in Mauritania felt that having larger wives meant they were wealthier and more capable of feeding their families. Living in desert terrain, wealth and status were important in ancient culture.
Now, young girls are groomed for marriage as infants to ensure they are a perfect image of wealth. In an RT Documentary posted on Facebook, filmmakers interviewed multiple families in the countryside of Mauritania who still practice the ancient custom of leblouh. Elders can be seen encouraging girls as young as 3 years old to drink copious amounts of goat’s milk and gruel so they can gain weight faster.
Slimmer women are frowned upon and considered impoverished. Families in the country believe their daughters will not attract decent, wealthy husbands if they are not at least 220 pounds by marriageable age. Fatimetou Lelhamel, a grandmother and leblouh expert, described to the filmmakers how they force-feed female children early.
“This is how we fatten up women,” Lelhamel said. “She drinks milk until the afternoon. We prepare couscous and she eats it, too. For breakfast, we prepare special milk, called ‘amzik.’ We churn the milk until butter starts to appear. Then we mix that with fresh milk.”
Based on US standards, the National Institutes of Health suggest a girl between the age of 9 and 13 consumes 1,6000 to 2,000 calories each day. For those who practice leblouh in Mauritania, young girls are forced to consume 14,000 to 16,000 per day. Many follow this custom while sacrificing the health of their daughters. However, an entire industry built around fattening young girls has emerged in the country due to the need to be obese for marriage.
Source link : https://travelnoire.com/this-country-force-feeds-young-girls-to-fatten-them-for-marriage
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Publish date : 2022-09-15 03:00:00
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