More Solar Dieting...

Following up on our April 26 post about Hira Manek's purported sunlight diet...Ananova now reports that a German scientist, Dr. Michael Werner, has subsisted for four years solely on sunlight and water mixed with a little fruit juice. He claims to have even gained weight on this remarkable regimen.

Dr. Werner's also got a book out on the subject, entitled "Living through the Energy of Light" (looked for it on Amazon, no luck). While no scientific explanation is yet available, German scientists are on the case and perhaps one will be forthcoming. For his part, Dr. Werner suggests "just a little bit of faith" is a factor in his (non)diet's success.

The Werner and Manek cases both recall earlier accounts of people who had learned to live without food. For instance, in "Autobiography of a Yogi" the author Paramahansa Yogananda describes a female Indian yogi, Gira Bala, who had not eaten in over 50 years. Yogananda wrote that her "nourishment is derived from the finer energies of the air and sunlight, and from the cosmic power that recharges [her] body through the medulla oblangata."

When asked why she didn't share her miraculous dietary secret with the world, Gira Bala replied, "I was strictly commanded by my guru not to divulge my secret. It is not his wish to tamper with God's drama of creation. The farmers would not thank me if I taught many people to live without eating! The luscious fruits would lie uselessly on the ground."