In a child this age, I hope they ruled out Prader Willi Syndrome, especially if the little guy was doing the grasping hands talk show circuit.
I seem to recall reading or hearing somewhere that those eating contest winners proceed to barf most of it up after they’re off stage. Anybody know if that’s true?
One of my psychology profs worked at a camp for Prader-Willi kids. Said it was sad - imagine your worst hunger pangs then imagine having them constantly. The camp IIRC pretty much just tried to distract the kids from their hunger. Literally have to lock the food up or these kids will eat it.
Another data point might be Sumo wrestlers. The Japanese ones (as distinct from the Samoan, Hawaiian or Mongolean, about whom I don’t know anything) are, I believe, typically fairly normal size men before they go into training. They use particular kinds of food to bulk up (and work on turning much of that bulk into muscle), including a kind of stew called chankonabe. Once they retire they might lose 1/3 or more of their weight, but their life expectancy is still quite short (60 to 65).
Roddy
No it wasn’t that. It struck me that the kid just never got full. Oh, and his parents let him eat greasy fatty foods all the time too.
Hmm…well maybe. You should be aware that Sumo is, like other spectator fighting events, split by weight. I suspect that a majority of Sumo wrestlers don’t look like “Sumo wrestlers”, but in general and particularly outside of Japan, you never see the (comparatively) thin guys. So Sumo don’t present any evidence that anyone can fatten up to high levels.
(For instance, you wouldn’t notice these guys on the street if they were wearing plain clothes.)
I think I have that movie…
My only contribution to this is anecdotal, from a friend who entered a hamburger-eating contest. In his case, that definitely was NOT true, nor did he think the other contestants did so. On the other hand, this was a once-a-year kind of thing for him and not something he did multiple times, therefore the effect on his weight was very minimal. (A few weeks “training”, then the event, then back to normal).
I guess he’d eventually end up overweight anyway though, right? If he didn’t have the right chemicals signaling fullness, he’d probably be gorging on what ever the parents fed him.
No matter how they dressed, if they were standing like that, I’d notice.
Or, according to my calculations, 54 gallons of celery.
That’s funny, because I need more! 
i have seen a lot of reality shows about the morbidly obese on tv. mostly shows from the usa. i am always astounded at the size of these people. i struggle to understand how a person could possibly become so huge.
all the comments i have read here make sense. it would seem there are several factors that combine to result in this bizarre increase in body mass.
i have never eaten a three or more course meal in my life. in my childhood my brothers sister and i were never served dessert. it was always one meal and a cup of tea or two. that was it. maybe appetite is conditioned from a young age.
i read an article years ago that suggested the more choice of food you have you more you are likely to eat. like when you go to an all you can eat place.
it still leaves me wondering though about the little switch in your head that simply tells your belly it is full. i know there have been thousands of opportunities for me to gorge on food and rarely would i eat more than i need at the time. i simply don’t need more food.
maybe that switch gets messed up by being encouraged to eat more at a young age and in later life it doesn’t switch your hunger off when it should.
i feel sympathy for people that are constantly hungry.
How many braaaaiiiins in 30,000 calories?
(danman, this thread is four years old, and several of the posters in it aren’t even here anymore. We call these “zombie” threads, because they’ve been brought back from the dead. No harm, just wanted to point it out because some people are frustrated when they post to a thread not realizing it’s “a zombie.” Me, I just like to make zombie jokes.)
Looks like aging did what NBA coaches couldn’t. Not that he’s fat, but he’s fully filled out now.
Aging does that to a lot of guys - my husband as a teenager ate until the food was gone without gaining an ounce. He can’t do that any longer. 
I recall reading that hugely obese people (e.g. the immobile 700-pound person who shows up in the news) are often carrying lots of fluid in addition to fat. Water is 8 pounds per gallon, so one could add a significant amount of weight by storing water while consuming fewer than 30K calories.
I think that’s actually a good point made in the zombie posts about how being really seriously overweight is like a long-term body stress-test.
I sure as hell know that if I weighed even 100 lbs extra, my knees would be GONE, as would most of my other joints, and there’s no way that my circulatory system would handle that extra load. It barely handles me!
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten 33,000 calories in a week before, let alone a day. Holy mother of god that’s a lot of food.
Works for me! 
I have a gut feeling that it is indeed the malfunction in the switch that tells you when you’re hungry (no pun intended). IMO when medical science delivers a medicine that can fix this, the obesity epidemic will wane.
The people that are so large they are essentially immobile need a “feeder”. This is usually a relative or spouse.