In Mauritania, a country crippled by food shortages, obesity is viewed as a woman's sign of wealth and prestige. To attain Mauritanian standards of beauty, many women undergo the practice of gavage, or fattening up. While traditionally the practice of fattening includes chugging camel's milk in a nomadic camp under a sweltering sun in the Sahara Desert, for a modern-day working Mauritanian woman appetite-inducing pills have become the new way to pack on the pounds.
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