10 year old South African boy suffers rare genetic condition that makes him eat continuously.

Ten-year old Caden Benjamin is suffering from a very rare genetic disorder that makes him eat continuously, even items that are not edible like rolls of toilet paper and dirt from floors. Caden suffers from the disorder named Prader-Willi syndrome.

Poor Caden never gets full, currently weighs 88.9kg instead of the normal 18kg - 40kg typical for 10 year olds. His mother, Zola Benjamin, said: “At one point, Caden was eating toilet paper. He’d eat rolls of it. Actually, he’d eat any paper he would find in the house.

“If there’s nothing for him to eat, he’ll scrape together the dirt he finds on the floor and eat that.”At three years old, he was 39.9kg and at that time, we didn’t know what was wrong with himWe went to a number of doctors and no one could tell us what was wrong and why he was gaining so much weight.”

Eventually, a doctor at the Steve Biko Academic Hospital in the city of Pretoria, in northern South Africa’s Gauteng Province, diagnosed Caden’s illness.

Zola said: “Normally, he would start off the day by eating four slices of cheese toast and then an hour later, he would drink Coke and eat leftover food from the night before.

“Then at lunch, he’d eat two large pieces of chicken. He’d eat hourly for the rest of the day.His weight began to spiral out of control and doctors became worried for his health, so they put him on a diet.

Zola has been forced to lock all her kitchen cabinets and her fridge and hide all the food in the house to stop Caden from gorging.

She said: “He’s really battling. I feel so terrible, but the doctors said that if I want to see my son alive, then he has to go on a diet. Each and every day is a battle. I have to check up on him all day and night.”

Caden struggles to move around and to even breathe because he is so overweight.

He also suffers from depression because he is unable to live like a normal 10-year-old boy.

Zola said: “Sometimes, he’ll just break down in tears and tell me he wants to go and play with the other children outside.

“But he is unable to do that and there’s no way I can help him