Scientific Basis
Nutritional science indicates that fasting for extended periods leads to starvation, dehydration, and eventual death. In the absence of calorie intake, the body normally burns its own reserves of glycogen, body fat, and muscle. Breatharians claim that their bodies do not consume these reserves while fasting.
Few breatharians have submitted themselves to medical testing; of those that have, including a hospital's observation of an Indian mystic surviving without food or water for 15 days, none have undergone peer review with results independently reproduced. In a handful of documented cases, individuals attempting breatharian fasting have died, and among the claims investigated by the Indian Rationalist Association, all were found to be fraudulent.
Read more about this topic: Inedia
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or basis:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979)