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Most people find it hard to resist their favourite food. Maybe it’ s ­chocolate or crisps or perhaps you can’t stay away from pizza.

But if you ever worry about your eating habits, spare a thought for Adele Edwards. The mum-of-five isn’t hooked on junk food, she has a much more unusual addiction.

Incredibly, she can’t stop eating household items, such as rubbers and elastic bands. But her favourite snack is the ­polyester filling from sofa cushions.

To her, man-made foam is more delicious than biscuits or cakes.

It sounds bizarre but Adele, 30, is suffering from a recognised medical condition. Having munched her way through eight sofas and five chairs, she ­estimates that she’s digested nearly 16st of synthetic foam in her ­lifetime.

She simply can’t stop and now she’s terrified of eating ­herself into an early grave. In recent months, she’s had­ ­emergency treatment for intestinal obstruction after eating chunks of polyester foam which she refers to simply as “cushion”.

Doctors have warned that she will leave her children motherless if she doesn’t give up, but she says she’s powerless to stop.

“I was 10 years old when I was first introduced to cushion,” explains Adele. “I was playing with my cousin when he peeled apart the sofa, picked off a piece of sponge and popped it into his mouth like it was bubble gum.

“At first, I thought it was strange but, after sucking it for a while, I came to like the texture.

“I started chewing cushion ­regularly and would swallow whole chunks as though it was candy floss. It sounds strange but, to me, foam tasted like sweets.”

As weeks went by, Adele found herself picking pieces of foam from the sofa whenever she fancied a snack. “Rather than foods like ­cookies and crisps, I just ­wanted to eat cushion,” she explains. “To me, it was better than ­regular food.”

Before long, she’d developed a full-blown addiction but she managed to keep it a secret from her family.

“From the beginning, eating cushion was my secret because I was afraid people would think I was weird,” she says.

“I’d creep to the sofa, unpick the fabric and peel off strips from the foam inside. Then I’d take it back into my bedroom or the bathroom to eat in private.

“My mum knew something was going on because she ­mentioned that our sofas were becoming lumpy and lopsided, but she never suspected that I was actually eating them.”

After five years, Adele’s habit had taken its toll on her health.

“I was having severe stomach pains and hadn’t gone to the ­bathroom in days,” she says.

She was taken to ­hospital and diagnosed with an extreme bowel obstruction.

The tiny pieces of polyester foam were blocking her small intestine and ­preventing her from digesting her food.

“I tried to deny it but X-rays showed the foam in my small ­intestine,” she says. “The doctors asked if I’d been eating anything spongy. I pretended that I had no idea what they were talking about but, eventually, I broke down ­because I was so scared.”

The doctors managed to clear the blockage in Adele’s bowel with strong laxatives and diagnosed her with medical disorder Pica.

Its name derives from the Latin word for magpie, a bird that eats almost anything.

Pica is seen in all people of all ages but is particularly common in pregnant ­women, small children, and those with developmental disabilities. Sufferers feel compelled to eat non-food items ranging from clay, dirt and sand to hairballs, ice or paint.

Despite the ­unusual symptoms, Pica is relatively common in people like Adele who suffer from ­anaemia.

The craving for non-food items is a response to extreme iron deficiency. The doctors told Adele, from Florida, that there was no cure for the disorder but arranged for her to have therapy. Unfortunately, it didn’t have much of an effect on her.

“My ­therapist suggested I was ­eating cushion as a reaction to my ­parents’ divorce but I knew I just liked the way it tasted,” she says.

Back home, Adele’s mum banned her from going anywhere near the sofa but she found other ways of satisfying her cravings.

Rifling through her mum’s ­wardrobe, she discovered foam shoulder pads in her blouses.

She also found mini foam ­paintbrushes and nibbled the foam straight off the wooden sticks, as though they were lollipops.

“As long as I was keeping Mum happy by staying away from the sofa, I could carry on feeding my addiction behind closed doors in the bathroom or my bedroom,” she says.

“I loved eating shoulder pads ­because they were cleaner than a dirty sofa. But although it was ­disgusting, I craved the crunch I got from smelly old couches.

“So to ­replicate that texture I would roll Mum’s shoulder pad foam in dirt for extra crunch.

“It know that it sounds weird but I loved the way the foam and dirt felt as a combination in my mouth. To me, it was like having chocolate syrup on top of ice cream.”

Adele’s mum realised what she was doing when she found shoulder pads missing from her clothes.

“I decided that I’d have to switch to eating other items like rubber bands and pencil erasers because I knew those things couldn’t be traced back to me,” says Adele. Often, she’d eat her secret snacks at the back of the classroom at school. If she sensed anyone watching, she’d hide in the bathroom to get her fix. After a while, she even found a way to munch pieces of her beloved sofa foam again.

“I’d get up early every morning, break cushion from the sofa into bite size pieces and stuff them into my pockets so I could eat them at school,” she says. “By eating only small pieces of foam, I didn’t get the ­stomach aches.”

Incredibly, as she grew up, left school and got an office job, she managed to keep her habits a secret from her friends, workmates and even her boyfriend Chansey, 26, despite gradually eating through eight sofas and five chairs. But her cover was finally blown three years ago when Chansey walked in on her pulling the sofa apart.

“I lied and said I was looking for something behind the cushions,” she says.

“But then he noticed me sneaking away to the bathroom for long periods of time and I knew that I had to be ­honest.”

Understandably for Chansey, he was very concerned.

“It freaked him out when I admitted that I sometimes rolled the foam in dirt,” she ­remembers.

In the past 25 years, Adele has only stopped her bizarre eating regime during her five pregnancies.

“My condition had the opposite effect on me and I never craved ­cushion,” she says.

Now mum to Kalvin, 15, Krystal, 12, Kiara, eight, Kelis, four and ­Kamila, 21 months, Adele juggles her responsibilities to her children with her weird diet.

Early each morning, before her kids wake up, Adele pulls a long strip of foam from inside the sofa and tears it into bite size pieces that she can munch during the day.

“I have cushion cravings every 30 minutes and snack on it in the car or at my desk when no one is ­looking,” she explains. “I want to eat it more when I’m stressed and will lock myself in the bathroom for a 30-minute binge, ­swallowing one piece after another.

“Chansey begs me to stop but it’s like ­asking an ­alcoholic to stop drinking. I’ve tried going cold turkey, but I have terrible ­withdrawal ­symptoms. It ­consumes my mind, my mouth waters. It’s all I can think about.”

Over the years, Adele’s health has grown ­progressively worse. Recently, she needed emergency treatment for yet ­another ­serious obstruction in her small ­intestine. Doctors have warned that the foam is ­poisoning her, but she cannot stop.

“I can’t go to rehab ­because I’m not addicted to drugs or alcohol,” she says. “Every time I binge on cushion, I feel like a fat person ­shoving ­hamburger after ­hamburger down my throat. Afterwards, I’m disgusted with myself.”

Now she’s fearful for her future.

“I’m scared,” she admits. “I’ve never eaten cushion in front of my kids, I don’t want them to copy me.

“They don’t know what I’m doing to my body but I’m terrified that one day, they’ll have to tell people: ‘Mummy died from eating too many sofas’.”