Woman Trying To Live On Only Sunlight And Water Is Ending Her Experiment

By Nick Venable | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

naveenaWe here at Giant Freakin’ Robot aren’t immune to the calls of quackery, and we sometimes get stretched outside our regular comfort zone, reporting on such things as music on ice and debunking moon-crazed lunacy. And now we’re sharing the “news” that living entirely off of sunlight alone isn’t possible for human beings. Maybe Superman, but no mere mortals.

Case in point, a month and a half after Eastside, Washington’s Naveena Shine gained global notoriety by attempting to prove whether or not “breatharianism” — the New Age-y claim that sunshine can serve as a food substitute — was steeped in realism. After spending 45 days on a diet consisting solely of water and tea — with the Emergen-C vitamin supplement added in the most recent days — Shine is abandoning the experiment, partly due to a lack of funds and partly due to having received a decent percentage of the Internet’s most focused hatred.

“I was just asking a question, but there was just so much negative response that that means the question can’t even be asked,” Shine said. The 65-year-old dropped from 159 pounds to her current weight of 126 pounds, but was still spending her days dancing and cleaning the trailer she rented to conduct her experiment. She filled the trailer with cameras to record her actions 24/7 to prove she wasn’t cheating on her diet, and this was part of why she ran out of money. She hoped for charitable donations but raised only $425 through her website. People spend money on a lot of crazy shit, but I guess they drew the line here.

She’ll be getting back into her vagabond lifestyle soon, and her first meal will consist of “lemon juice for vitamin C and a spoonful of maple syrup in warm water for energy.” Then she’ll move on to sauteed vegetables, and fish in a few weeks. Sure, it sounded like a dumb idea when she started, but experiments exist for a reason, and we’re glad to know that Shine didn’t take it to its final, inevitable conclusion. If we really need to know how to discover the optimal recipe for living, let’s figure out how this guy lived so long.