Exactly. Massive ascites, abdominal cavity fills with fluid because there is not enough albumin to keep it intravascular. Truly horrible. I’ve only seen one case of each in the States, and the kwashiorkor case was iatrogenic. Lesson: Never let orthopedic surgeons write diet plans!
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Not going to look at the pictures – in fact, you might consider using hide details on top of spoiler? – but I was morbidly curious if an all sugar diet would lead to this or vitamin deficiency first. 
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Not eating is a really lame super power
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I don’t know the odds, but I bet it’s more likely to have memory issues after being struck by lightning then to suddenly be able to subsist on soda. Or to become a sleep eater.
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Well, a diet of all sodas, mostly diet sodas, has been documented to lead to awful kwashiorkor. I am left to guess that the amount of sugar that was provided was enough to stave off marasmus. (of course, there is always the question of compliance with said diet. You wouldn’t have to sneak much real food to get enough calories to avoid that.) Vitamin deficiencies usually take a while to show up and aren’t (initially) very dramatic in presentation.
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My point still stands. A 20 year old on an all-liquid diet that includes drinks with protein and vitamins might be considered a “surprising lifestyle choice” but still not really newsworthy. There are tons of younger folks in the States who do Soylent liquid diets, nobody really cares.
But I mention old age because both my father and my father-in-law ended up on all liquid diets in their 70s, my father-in-law for years and years, and I understand from the doctors it is really quite common. No news coverage for them!
Again, this is only newsworthy if she’s not getting protein, and it’s not established as to whether or not that’s the case, and I think most of us are fairly aware of mass market protein and vitamin drinks that can technically still be called “soft drinks” but one can certainly live off of if eating solid foods isn’t in the cards.
I’m the other sort of doctor, but I professionally listen to medical doctors.
As someone’s said upstream, it’s more believable if “soda” is a mistranslation and it’s some sort of milk-beveridge. Google-translate of the Vietnamese source seems to suggest sugar-water rather than milky.
You’ve covered your protein deficiencies, but I also jumped to:
- essential fatty acids
- fat-soluble vitamins
- water soluble vitamins.
- minerals.
Scurvey’s the well-known vitamin defecency, but she likely got enough fruit juices to avoid that one. Nope, she got some fruit to start with but fully switched to sugary drinks?!
The fats and fat-soluble vitamins: hormone production is the main one I think of. No surprise she couldn’t breastfeed, but I’m amazed she had enough sex hormones to conceive and carry to term.
Folate - where the heck is the folate in her diet? Or calcium? How did her kids survive?
Between calcium and vit d, her bone health should be horrific.
Iron: she should be deathly aneamic. As described she has less iron than a Dickensian peasant.
This just triggers too many breatharian alarm bells for me. Not only does she have this weird diet that makes no sense, she’s never sick.
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Yeah, the question I was responding to asked about protein and calories specifically, but there are so, so many ways for this sort of shit to make you dead. Not believable for one moment.
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Yes. She tasted the food often as she cooks. A bite, an adjustment, a bite, stir, bite… But when the meal was ready, she was not hungry and skipped the meal altogether.
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Its strange how many Breatharian leaders get caught at McDonalds or similar, chowing down on burgers and milkshakes.
The strange, sad Bay Area cult that fell apart over a pot pie March 9, 2022, San Francisco Chronicle
For most dieters, his shopping list on that fateful day in 1983 (chicken pot pie, chili and biscuits) would be, at worst, an embarrassment. But Brooks was no average weight-watcher. He was the founder of the spiritual and pseudoscientific movement known as Breatharianism,
(Onebox failed with a 403. 
)
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How much vitamin C in Coke? She’s gonna get scurvy.
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I lived in Santa Cruz when Wily Brooks was giving talks, and he was discovered getting and eating a burrito from a local 7/11.
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But not water and soda. Liquid diet involves things like this, and not clear liquids for that amount of time.
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There’s nothing in the article that claims she’s been subsisting in the recent past on clear liquids, and many of the bottles in the article picture appear to contain darker liquids that could easily be protein/vitamin drinks. The article mentions “soft drinks” - ie, non-alcoholic drinks, which may or may not be carbonated - and never references sodas (except in the Boing Boing-added tag which simply may not be accurate).
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Imagine me, fresh out of school, wide-eyed and working as a newbie engineer amongst those who are experienced and battle-hardened, and with I believing how cool it all is… then I happen to hear from across the room the raised voice of our lead electrical engineer, angry that his “hero”, Brooks, had been set-up. On that, gentle “corrections” from his immediate work colleagues were met with anger. It was not known if said lead practiced Breatharianism, but I was told that some time before, he had been found unconscious and splayed prone halfway inside an Alpha Beta supermarket open refrigerated display case. Several years later, he suffered a heart attack at our company rec center and passed away that day.
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A bright career awaits you as Donald Trump’s Surgeon General.
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Leaving aside that “soft drink” is used synonymously with “soda” (“soft drink” also including non-carbonated drinks that are nutritionally equivalent to sodas), it’s pretty clear what’s being claimed here:
“relying solely on water and soft drinks for sustenence. Her refrigerator and freezer are filled with bottles of water and sugary soft-drinks.”
And yes, a nutritionally-complete liquid diet may not be strange now, but the claim is that she started 50 years ago, in Vietnam, during a war, when such things wouldn’t have been available to her. (And leaving aside how long an active young person could thrive on a liquid diet. Fiber is pretty darned important, long-term.) The article ends by making it clear the claim is on par with another story of a man who supposedly hasn’t slept in 60 years. So yeah: this is total bullshit.
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