In the way that your phone feed can often deliver you really old news, I just got wind of the vegan raw food diet “influencer” who starved to death a few years ago eating mounds of durian.
Zhanna Samsonova (“D’Art”), a Russian living in Malaysia, wasted away in 2023 after years of promoting a diet on her popular online accounts that consisted largely of seed sprouts, jackfruit, and the famously stinky and spiky durian.
In a NYPost article, friends chimed in who had been worried but couldn’t influence the influencer:
Unfortunately, her friends believe her so-called healthy food choices were to blame for her death.
“You don’t need to be a doctor to understand where this will lead,” said one pal of her all-durian and jack fruit diet.
“Zhanna’s idle stagnation was causing her to melt before our eyes, but she believed everything was fine,” theorized another. “Only her eyes, merry eyes, and gorgeous hair compensated for the dreadful sight of a body tortured by idiocy. Forgive me if it sounds harsh.”
Not to say a vegan and/or raw food diet is deadly but it can result in subpar B12 levels (and also iron, calcium, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamin D) if not properly supplemented, “which can result in anemia, nervous system damage, infertility, and, somewhat paradoxically, heart disease.” The article attests this form of accidental malnutrition isn’t unheard of:
Last year, vegan Florida mother Sheila O’Leary, 38, was sentenced to life in prison after starving her 18-month-old son to death by feeding him only small amounts of fruits and vegetables.
Quantity and quality seem key, along with a certain messy abandon that the most successful animals in our midst seem to have to survive. I think it’s important to look not at mere consumption, which can be done right without being deadly, but what looks under the hood like an eating disorder, anorexia nervosa with an extra edge of orthorexia nervosa, according to a nutritionist interviewed on EconomicTimes. You may have heard of anorexia (purposeful deprivation), but orthorexia entails “an obsessive focus on a ‘clean’ diet, leading to mental and physical consequences.” Being “clean,” isn’t, you could say, “natural.”
The idea of this woman slowly starving to death as she consumes potentially massive quantities of fruits and even perhaps often feeling full and full of energy, has me thinking of cows in a field chewing grass all day and how massive a load of it they must eat to survive. Or the largest whales in the deepest water who skim for tons of the most miniscule plankton, which seems almost cruel to give the biggest animal the tiniest diet but somehow it all works just fine.
A cow, according to Clover Meadows Beef,
will consume about 2.5-3% of their body weight a day. If the cow weights, 1,000 pounds, that means they’re eating 25-30 pounds of grass.
How can cows survive on grass alone when that sort of diet would starve a human? GrassFedSolutions explains that cows are ruminants (as opposed to ruminators), who are defined as such by their rumen, the largest part of their multi-chambered stomach, populated with microbes and enzymes that help them digest “the tough cellulose structure of grass, allowing cattle to extract proteins and carbohydrates from grass.” And, most interestingly, the microbes themselves are considered an important part of their diet, adding protein and needed nutrients not found in grass alone. So they aren’t exactly vegan raw foodists after all; they subsist on microorganisms.
Then you have these whales who plow through open-mouthed and sift through tons, TONS, of plankton and krill or whatever else ends up in there (Geppetto, Jonah). Someone describes it nicely here in poetic layman’s terms on a Quora forum, making a good argument as to why the big guys are stuck eating the littlest for survival’s sake:
First of all, whales are big, I mean really big, so they’d have to eat smaller fish. They couldn’t exactly take a bite out of a smaller fish, right? A smaller fish could easily evade them as well, just hang a hard right and get out of the way. It isn’t like the fish wouldn’t see the whale bearing down on them.
The kinds of fish that eat other individual fish are called sight feeders. Tuna are sight feeders. They are fast and agile, can spot a single fish on its own and strike quickly, gulping down their prey. Small fish swim in schools to evade sight feeders. Sure there’s a whole bunch of little fish in front of them, but it is impossible for a sight feeder to pick a single target out of a fast moving school of fish. You get a headache just from looking at them. That’s where guys like the whales come in. They just lumber through the ocean, open up their gaping maws and inhale a gigantic mouthful of whatever it is that they eat.
While the cow, who becomes “beef,” is ironically a vegan raw foodist (plus magic microbes), the whale can’t be so discerning. Plankton is a mix of plants and animals (zooplankton and phytoplankton) and it’s not like the big beast can sort that out on the move. Smithsonian Ocean says a blue whale can consume 16 tonnes (or metric tons) of krill in one day. “That’s about the same as 8,800 quarter-pound burgers!”
All of this is a roundabout way of getting to the animal I really came here to talk about, the astounding creature that somehow got in my birdbrain when I saw the ancient clickbait over Zhanna and her durian. For some reason, my ever-flitting mind immediately went to hummingbirds.
A bird that fascinates and eludes with its nervous skittishness and ceaseless activity, so much so that I have declared that I relate and appointed it my spirit animal for its busy ways. But before I declare a thing my soulmate, I should get to know it, right? Can these little things ever stop eating? Is it built of 100% flower syrup? Do they ever get to sleep? And when will this fleeting feathered gem pause to let me take a picture already?
I hung a red hummingbird feeder from a lamppost on my Catskills land and so much enjoy when these creatures appear and disappear as quickly as they arrive. Though they don’t make bird calls, the coolest thing is how you can hear them coming insect-like and buzzing, as this keen observer writes on the Adirondack Council:
It’s always exciting when you hear the hummingbirds’ distinct sound as they come closer to the feeder…sort of like a bumblebee who’s had too much coffee. They dart back and forth and up and down—alternating between eating and hovering in place to take a break from their repast. I especially like when they perch on the feeder with their tiny feet while taking a long, seemingly relaxing drink of the sweet sugar and water mixture that they love so much and which provides their sustenance.
It’s hummingbird season starting in these parts, as sightings in the New York metro area begin in late April, early May and definitely by mid-May. So I have to fill my feeder and find a spot on my new land, facing one of the treehouse windows ideally, for my stalking purposes.
As expected, they eat a lot, and much more comparatively than a whale (between 5-30% of their body weight daily) or a cow (only around 3%), or, for that matter, a human who falls somewhere between those two at around 6.5%). The hummingbird has an extremely high metabolism and consumes about half their body weight daily, every waking moment or they’ll drop dead.
Hummingbirds have a very high metabolism and must eat all day long just to survive. They consume about half their body weight in bugs and nectar, feeding every 10-15 minutes and visiting 1,000-2,000 flowers throughout the day. In addition to nectar from flowers and feeders, these birds eat small insects, beetles, ants, aphids, gnats, mosquitoes, and wasp.
So they too will eat whatever fuel they come across flora or fauna. They have to bulk up before they migrate, sometimes traveling up to 23 miles a day in their insatiable quest for nectar. There are 330 varieties of these tiny superheroes who can fly forward, backward and upside down, achieving the unique ability to hover like a helicopter. The fun facts compound: They can reach speeds of 30 mph to 45 when performing a “courtship dive.” Their heart beats 225 times per minute at rest, and 1,200/minute in flight. Wings beat 70 times per second in “regular” flight, and 200 per second in diving. They are fast-hearted and big-brained. Their brain takes up 4.2% of their weight (the largest of any bird.) Humans are only two percent brained, and we all know how only a minority percentage of that brain gets used.
Studies have shown that hummingbirds can remember migration routes and every flower they’ve ever visited. They can also figure out how long to wait between visits so the flowers have time to generate more nectar. They can even recognize humans!
Can we talk about naps yet. Be still my racing heart, I’m spent just reading all this. The way I’m so sensitive that a regular sleep is fitful and not very constructive, these birds require something more like a sledgehammer or sleeping pill to give them the real rest they need. They go into what’s known as a torpor on a nightly basis or for even minutes or a few hours as needed. Torpor is defined as a near-hibernation state in which their crazy metabolism finally slows and the body temp can stay low. If their metabolism didn’t slow when they sleep, they would die of starvation.
Ah, and I discover we have more in common. Hummingbirds are introverts. But they might take this a little farther than I do. They are anti-social, but surprising fierce when it comes to love.
Hummingbirds are, for the most part, unsocial creatures. They compete for food sources and often when more than one hummingbird is around, it ends up in a series of high-speed chases. Mating season can get a bit competitive as well, and male hummingbirds get mean. To prove their dominance, male hummingbirds will bob and weave and then use their needle-like beaks like knives and stab each other in the throat. A violent way to get his mate.
Well, nectar drinking throat stabbers! Like the women who write love letters to serial killers, my affection for this bird endures. They do what they need to do, and they seem to do it brilliantly.
But that said, of course they too are jeopardized by development and climate change from our species of beef eaters. Plant nectar-bearing native plants if you can. And for a real treat to entice them, get and fill a feeder. I love a DIY, so I was happy to find this drink recipe on Audubon to attract more hummingbirds to my rural outpost, which is just simple sugar water:
Materials:
• 1/4 cup refined white sugar
• 1 cup boiling water
• Bowl
• Spoon
Note: Please do not substitute honey, which can promote dangerous fungal growth, or use red food coloring, which is not necessary and could also prove harmful to birds.Steps:
1. Mix sugar and boiling water until sugar is dissolved.
2. Cool and fill feeder.
3. Hang up your feeder outside and wait for the hummingbirds to come.
Watching this sort of feed is way more nourishing than any social media and will not stink like a durian.
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Yeah that influencer was anorexia masquerading as vegan. Eating with "messy abandon" as you say, is the way to go! Who knew hummingbirds were bird eaters?
It's not just vegans. Look up "rabbit sick" which affects humans that eat only rabbit (which is extremely lean).