'Breatharian' couple magically defies biology, subsists only on clicks and BS

Are you sitting down? Good. We have some astonishing news: Food and water are no longer essential to staying alive.

So claims a "Breatharian" couple in the spotlight this week, who say humans can be sustained by "the universe's energy." For the past nine years, Akahi Ricardo and Camila Castello, who split their time between California and Ecuador, claim they've eaten little more than a piece of fruit or vegetable broth just three times per week.

Castello says she even kept her food-free lifestyle during not one, but two pregnancies. Wow! And somehow the family of four still appears well-fed and healthy in photos.

Maybe all we really need is love -- and air.

Hold up. It turns out we also need protein, carbohydrates, and fat to support our basic bodily functions, such as, you know, breathing. So what's the deal with this couple? In short, they're promoting a diet that doesn't work, and in fact is downright dangerous.

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"You need protein to build muscle and you need fat to support your nervous system and for heart health, and you need carbohydrates to keep your energy up and to feed your brain," said Liz Sanders, a registered dietician nutritionist and the director of research and partnerships at the nonprofit International Food Information Council.

The occasional apple or bowl of broth just isn't going to cut it, she says.

"If you subsisted on that, you would be emaciated and pretty much unable to function normally," Sanders said. "That's a dangerous diet to subsist on ... and during pregnancy, it's extremely dangerous."

Food? Gross. Water? Yuck. Credit: Mito Images/REX/Shutterstock

Doctors recommend that pregnant women consume around 1,800-2,000 calories in the first trimester (their normal intake), then add another 300 calories in the second trimester and 500 calories in the third trimester.

"If you're only eating fruit, you're not getting the fat your baby needs to build a healthy nervous system, the protein they need to build muscle -- all of that," Sanders said.

"This is a pretty hard and fast 'don't try this at home,'" she added. "You would be hard-pressed to find any health professional who would recommend [the Breatharian diet] to anybody."

Breatharianism goes way back

You know who would recommend this diet? Wiley Brooks.

Now in his late 70s, Brooks began promoting the practice in the early 1980s and founded the Breatharian Institute of America, which in the past offered $100,000 "immortality workshops" and proffered $10,000 bottles of water. (Brooks didn't invent the practice, however; the idea of subsisting only on prana, the vital life force, dates back centuries.)

Brooks said he became a Breatharian out of a desire to stay young and vibrant, not grow old and bald like his father. "When a person gets older and wiser, he should get younger, he should not die in an unhealthy body," he told talk show host Tom Snyder in 1981.

"All the constituents that we need is taken from the air we breathe," Brooks said. "And the fact is, there is only one thing that keeps the human body alive, and that is breathing."

Wrong!