I couldn’t let this article on BoingBoing pass without a comment or two. It’s an excerpt from a new book called "The Worlds Worst" about the breatharian life style, claiming that it’s the world’s worst diet. I heartily concur, if not because of what it appears to do to your brain.
As some of you may know I once had the privilege of working with a chap who had wholeheartedly embraced this lifestyle. He hadn’t made it onto just fresh air but was several years into what he claimed was a twenty or so year quest to survive on absolutely nothing. He consumed only raw fruit and vegetables and drank nothing other than adam’s ale.
To say that he was a nutbag is doing a disservice to nutbags. Completely crazy. Barking mad. But good for plenty of material. A couple of examples;
Our subject (let’s call him "Dave") proudly stated that because he was following the breatharian lifestyle he would never get sick. The next day he came into work with bronchitis.
He once asked me, as the token pommie in the office and therefore an expert on the subject, where he should go to play professional football (or soccer as he called it). When I asked why he wanted to make such a radical career change, bearing in mind that he hadn’t even kicked a ball up until that point, he said that his psychic had told him to do it.
And there are more. A recent sighting of "Dave" was in Indonesia where he had, apparently, gone to buy a few acres of land somewhere in the archipelago to farm durian fruit. Apparently it was another hot tip from his spiritual adviser.