It seems like you can’t turn on the TV without hearing about the obesity epidemic plaguing the world. But long before McDonald‘s sent child obesity rates soaring and soda was tacking pounds on by the dozens, Jon Brower Minnoch defied all odds to become the fattest man in the world.
At 1400 pounds, Minnoch remains undefeated as the heaviest person to ever live. But how did a man born during the Second World War manage to pack on so many pounds?
Who was Jon Brower Minnoch?
Jon Brower Minnoch was, by all accounts, always a heavy boy. Born in 1941, the Washington native was the only child of a lower-middle-class household. His father was a machinist, his mother was a registered nurse, and the family lived on Bainbridge Island, which connects to Seattle, Washington via ferry.
By the time he was 12, Minnoch was 295 lbs. When he lost his father to a heart attack in 1962, Minnoch was just under 400 lbs. Minnoch married his first wife the following year, and by the end of 1963, he weighed 700 lbs.
“The world’s heaviest man” made a living driving “water taxis” to and from the island. He and his wife owned the only taxi service available, and his great girth made him a sort of attraction. According to one family friend, the islanders themselves loved Jon Minnoch and didn’t see what the fuss was about. To his friends and neighbors, he was only viewed as a family man with a “skinny little 110 pound wife” and 2 kids. He was described as “warm and funny.”
The weight disparity between Minnoch and his wife broke the record for the greatest weight differential between a married couple.
Minnoch tried to live a conventional life and never saw himself as handicapped. Driving a ferry was a largely sedentary profession, and he operated the water taxi for 17 years. His average weight during this period was between 800 and 900 pounds. His body fat percentage was roughly 80% of his weight, impressive for his 6-foot-1 frame.
He suffered from congestive cardiac failure, which, his endocrinologist theorized, caused him to carry an excess of 900 pounds of fluid. Other doctors have refuted this claim, however.
Minnoch tried several strict diets throughout his life. In 1978, under a doctor’s guidance, he attempted a 600-calorie-a-day diet. In addition, he took massive doses of diuretics in hopes of draining the excess fluid. After only a few weeks, Minnoch’s body began to shut down. His wife forced him to go to the hospital, but it wasn’t easy for responders to get Minnoch out of his home. Firefighters had to remove a window to lift him out of his residence and used plywood in place of a stretcher due to his size. He stayed in the hospital for 2 years.
He was diagnosed with massive edema (an accumulation of extracellular fluid, which causes the body to swell). His incredible size made it impossible to get a precise measurement, but his endocrinologist postulated that Minnoch was 1400 pounds, “Probably more than that.” Doctors were baffled by Minnoch’s recovery.
During his hospital stay, Minnoch was put on a strict 1200 calorie per day diet. It helped him lose a record 924 pounds, one of the largest human weight losses ever recorded. Still over 400 pounds, Minnoch dreamed of dropping another 100. He viewed the weight loss as a chance for a new life. His first wife and the mother of his two sons left him in 1980, the same year he was released from his prolonged stay.
Despite his hopes for even more weight loss, once he left the hospital, Minnoch lost control of his weight yet again. Just over a year later, after marrying his second wife, Minnoch was readmitted to the hospital, this time at 952 lbs. Minnoch shattered another world record, this time by gaining 200 lbs. in a single week!
He spent another year in the hospital, where it took 13 people to roll him out of the bed, one created by pushing two beds together. 23 months after his hospital admittance, Minnoch died of cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, and restrictive lung disease. He was 41 years old and just under 800 lbs.
Minnoch’s casket was fabricated specially for him out of thick plywood and lined with cloth. His casket was so large that it required 2 burial plots, and it took 11 pallbearers to move.