20/20: Supersize teens

Published: 8:17AM Tuesday December 01, 2009 Source: 20/20

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  • 20/20: Supersize teens (Source: ONE News)
    Source: ONE News

There's no getting around it: Laura and Victoria are fat.

In fact, both American teens are so overweight they could die.

In a desperate bid to shift the kilos they are turning to something else that could risk their lives - weight loss surgery.

Laura Broach is 13-years-old and weighs 24 stone. She is one of the youngest American children to be recommended for a gastric bypass.

Apart from going to lessons she rarely leaves the house, preferring to chat on the internet with people who don't know her weight. She's being bullied at school because of her size and says: "I do think kids are cruel and like, start calling you names. There are some hurtful names."

Laura has also developed a potentially fatal condition - sleep apnoea. At night her windpipe is choked by the fat around her neck; she has to wear a mask while she sleeps that pumps air into her to lungs.

Victoria Jordan is 14-years-old and weighs 19 stone. Her mother is paying $25,000 for Victoria to have a gastric band fitted around her stomach.

She says: "I think it's hard to stay slim because there's just so many places and options that it's really easy to get food. You can just go out any time of the night or day and get something and at the movies they don't serve healthy stuff or wherever kids go there's not really a healthy option."

The programme follows Laura and Victoria in the run up to their operations and their preparation for changing their eating habits forever. Both of them dream of being slim.

But will the cost to their bodies of such drastic surgery prove too much to stomach?

Catch 20/20 at 9.30pm Thursday on TV2.

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