Today in my readings I came across mention of something I’d never heard of: breatharians. These are people who believe they can live without food by subsisting on air and sunlight. It sounds insane of course, but a google search reveals plenty of conversation about the topic. How do they do it? Well, for the most part they don’t.
In 1983, most of the leadership of the movement in California resigned when Wiley Brooks, a notable proponent of breatharianism, was caught sneaking into a hotel and ordering a chicken pie.[
Mmmm… chicken pie.
Also note:
Under controlled conditions where people are actually watched to see if they can do it without sneaking some real food, they fail. The name most commonly associated with breatharianism is Australia’s Jasmuheen (born Ellen Greve), who claims to live only on a cup of tea and a biscuit every few days. However, the only supervised test of this claim (by the Australian edition of 60 Minutes in 1999) left her suffering from severe dehydration[4] and the trial was halted after four days, despite Greve’s insistence she was happy to continue. She claimed the failure was due to being near a city road, leading to her being forced to breathe “bad air”. She continued this excuse even after she was moved to the middle of nowhere.
The various forms of human insanity seem to have no limits.