A three-year-old boy from China is so overweight, even his mum can't lift him.

At 9st 6lb, the toddler is around five times the normal weight of a boy of the same age.

When Lu Hao was born in Dashan, Guandong Province, he weighed just 5.7 lbs. But from the age of three months, he started to rapidly gain weight.

Now the toddler can eat as much as an adult and throws tantrums when food is not forthcoming.

His father Lu Yuncheng said: "His appetite is so good that for a meal he can eat three big bowls of rice, even more than I and his mother."

"We have to let him be as if we don't feed him he will cry non-stop," said his mother, Chen Yuan.

Last year alone, the toddler managed to gain one and a half stone in weight, the Daily Mail reported.

As well as being dangerously overweight, Lu Hao is also unusually tall for his age. A specialist at the Guandong Children's Hospital suggested the boy's weight gain may be due to a hormonal disorder.

Whatever the cause, the three-year-old is already at risk of developing serious obesity-related health problems, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, heart disease, some types of cancer and type 2 diabetes.

Recent figures from 2009-10 show that nearly one in four children are either overweight or obese when they start school in England, and one in three are by the time they leave primary school.

In 2007, the government Foresight report predicted that 25 per cent of children in the UK would be obese by 2050, unless action was taken.

http://uk.health.lifestyle.yahoo.net/Three-year-old-child-weighs-more-than-nine-stone.htm