A 26-year-old South Korean man was recently sentenced to one year in prison for deliberately binge eating in order to become obese and be declared unfit for mandatory military service.

Military service is no trivial matter in South Korea. It doesn’t matter if you’re a globally-known singer, a successful actor, or a billionaire; if you’re a healthy adult male between the ages of 18 and 35, you have to spend at least 21 months in the army. The most you can do is postpone the compulsory service, but you’ll have to go through it at some point. However, if you are declared unfit for service because of health issues, you’re off the hook. One young South Korean man allegedly tried to avoid serving in the military by binge eating and becoming obese. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite as he had planned and he now has to spend a year behind bars.

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Popular Douyin streamer Kong Yufeng recently sparked controversy in China by eating pig feed on camera as part of a challenge to live on the cheapest food she could find.

On October 30, Kong Yufeng, aka ‘King Kong Liuke’, posted a controversial video on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, in which she announced a self-imposed challenge to live on the cheapest food she could find for at least one week. The popular streamer told her fans that she had browsed Zhihu, a Chinese forum known for sharing budget-friendly tips, and found pig feed to be the best option. A large bag of pig feed cost only 100 yuan (US$14) and was allegedly high in protein, low in fat, and “healthier than takeaway food,” so she decided to try it in front of her fans. According to Kong, the pig feed contained natural ingredients like soybeans, peanuts, sesame, corn, and added vitamins, but the taste was an acquired one.

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A Harvard medical student recently completed an intriguing “eggxperiment” by eating a total of 720 chicken eggs over 28 days to test their effect on his bad cholesterol.

Eggs have long had a bad reputation for raising LDL (low-density lipoprotein) or ‘bad’ cholesterol, and even though that perception of the protein-rich food has changed in recent years, many health experts still warn that eggs should be consumed in moderation. However, the results of a recent experiment are bound to once again spark a heated debate around the effects of consuming eggs on a daily basis. Nick Horowitz, a Harvard medical student with a PhD in metabolic health, set out on an extreme experiment to find out what the effects of eating an egg every hour for 28 straight days would have on his health. Not only did he survive the challenge, but the results of his tests during the unusual diet were surprising, to say the least.

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Muluwork Ambaw, a 26-year-old woman from Ethiopia, claims to have gone the last 16 years of her life without eating or drinking anything.

Most people can hardly last a few hours without munching on something, but Muluwork Ambaw insists that she shunned food forever one day when she was only 10 years old, after her appetite vanished out of the blue. Apart from her complete lack of sustenance, Ambaw reportedly has a normal life, she is in good health and has plenty of energy to perform her daily tasks, which include cooking for others and running various errands. The young woman has undergone several medical tests in Ethiopia, but none could really confirm if she spoke the truth, although doctors at a hospital in Addis Ababa did confirm that there was no evidence of any food in her intestines at the time of the examination.

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A 75-year-old Vietnamese woman claims she has not eaten any solid food in 50 years, instead surviving only on water and sugary soft drinks.

Ms. Bui Thi Loi, from Loc Ninh commune, in Vietnam’s Quang Binh Province, looks in great shape for her age, which only makes her diet that much more surprising. The elderly woman insists that she has lived on water and soft drinks for half a century and that she never craves solid foods. It all started in 1963 when she was struck by lightning while she and other women were climbing up a mountain to treat injured soldiers during the war. She was knocked unconscious and although she survived, she was never the same after that. She didn’t eat anything for days after coming to her senses, so her friends started giving her sweetened water.

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An Iranian man claims he stopped consuming food one day in 2006 and has relied solely on sweetened fizzy drinks for energy ever since.

58-year-old Gholamreza Ardeshiri claims that the mere sight of food makes him nauseous and that he has been surviving on water and fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coca-Cola for the last 17 years. It all started one night in 2006, when he woke up with a strange feeling in his mouth, one that he just couldn’t get rid of, no matter how many doctors he visited. In the end, he decided to shun food permanently and has been living a perfectly normal life ever since. His family doesn’t eat in front of him, because just seeing them makes him sick, and he gets all his energy from carbonated drinks. He drinks three large bottles of soda per day and insists that he never feels hungry.

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Balakrishnan Palayi, an Indian man from Kasaragod, claims to have eaten nothing but coconut for the last 28 years in order to treat his gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

Imagine eating only one thing for over two decades. As a foodie with access to so many delicious treats, the mere thought of restricting one’s diet to a single food for a month, let alone 28 years, sounds almost impossible, but one Indian man claims that it has kept him healthy and fit. Balakrishnan Palayi, a man from Chandera in Kasaragod, was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a condition that caused him to lose all his strength to the point where he could hardly move around. As part of his treatment, he started eating coconut, and he felt so much better that he soon decided it was the only thing he was going to eat moving forward.

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A Vietnamese woman claims to have given up solid food over four decades ago and survived on water spiked with a bit of salt, sugar and lemon juice ever since.

63-year-old Ms. Ngon is famous in her native Tan Trach commune, Vietnam’s Long An province, for her very unique diet. For the last 41 years, she has allegedly been living on water with a few grams of salt and sugar, as well as a bit of lemon juice, completely shunning all other nutrients. She not only appears to be in tip-top shape for her age, but she is in great health, is always full of energy and can execute Yoga poses that people decades younger than her wouldn’t even dream of attempting. She considers water vital to her health in the same way that watering is to a tree…

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Geospiza difficilis septentrionalis, aka the Vampire Finch, is a small bird with a very unusual diet – other bird’s blood.

Found on only two small islands in the Galapagos Archipelago – Darwin and Wolf – the vampire finch is a subspecies of the sharp-beaked ground finch, a relatively small and harmless-looking bird. However, as the specie’s name suggests, it has a very sharp beak, which it sometimes uses to break through more than just fruits and nuts. The vampire finch got its name from its bizarre habit of pecking at larger birds’ skin and feeding on their blood whenever other food sources are scarce.

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A popular plant-based meal subscription service is offering the ‘UK’s biggest meat-eater’ the chance to earn £50,000 ($68,000) by going vegan for three months.

Vibrant Vegan recently announced that it is on the lookout for a Vegan Curious Coordinator, a die-hard meat-eater willing to experience an exclusively vegan lifestyle for at least three months. The selected person will have to sign a contract, pledging to not consume any animal-based foods during the three-month trial, while at the same time encouraging others to give veganism a go on social media. If they abide by the agreement, they stand to earn the the equivalent of a £50,000 salary.

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A 45-year-old Belgian man claims that he has eaten only potato fries and a fricadelle – Dutch hot dog – for dinner every day ever since he was 13.

Rudy Gybels, a resident of Schaffen in Belgium’s Flemish Brabant province, has had the same food for dinner every evening since he was a teenager. It all started when he was 13, when his mother, desperate to get him to eat more fruits and vegetables, came up with a compromise solution. Rudy would eat healthy food at lunch, and he was free to enjoy his favorite food – potato fries – for dinner. And he has been sticking to that deal ever since, eating only fries for dinner every evening for the last 32 years.

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A nutritionist who claims to not have consumed any water for a year has sparked controversy online by suggesting that her long-term dry fast has greatly improved her health and well-being.

35-year-old Sophie Partik used to suffer aching joints, puffy eyes, food allergies, bad skin and digestive issues, but claims that all these problems went away when she started dry-fasting. She doesn’t touch any liquids for 13-14 hours a day, and when she does it’s only living water, like the juice of fruits and vegetables. The most she has gone without any liquids was 52 hours, but she dreams of the day when she will be able to dry fast for 10 days. Sophie hasn’t drunk bottled or faucet water in a year, and claims that the need for water is only in our heads.

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Austin Davis, a 20-year-old man from Keystone Heights, Florida, claims to eaten almost nothing but macaroni and cheese for the last 17 years of his life.

We’ve featured picky eaters before, people who only enjoyed things like pizza or french fries, but Austin Davis isn’t one such person. Even if he tries eating something other than macaroni and cheese, and actually enjoys it, his body will immediately reject it and he’ll start to gag. Doctors say he is suffering from a psychological condition known as avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, where new foods trigger negative physical side-effects. This condition is often linked to traumatic events, and Davis was indeed diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and removed from his home, after being physically abused by his father. This has negatively impacted his social life as well as his eating habits, but he wants to change.

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News on an Indonesia toddler who has been living on brewed coffee for the last eight months, because her young parents were too poor to afford formula or cow’s milk, recently shocked millions in East Asia.

Hadijah Haura, a 14-month-old girl from the village of Tonro Lima Village, in Indonesia’s West Sulawesi province, consume 3 baby bottles of coffee – around 1.5 liters – every day. That’s more than most grown-ups. She’s been consuming the caffeine-rich drink daily since she was just six-months-old, because her young parents couldn’t afford to buy milk for her. Hadijah has been practically living on coffee for half her life, but appears to be growing at a normal rate and hasn’t had any serious medical problems yet. Her parents are aware that coffee is not fit for a toddler, but claims that they had no choice, because they had nothing else to give their daughter.

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It sounds like the sarcastic name of a product you’d expect to hear in a satirical sitcom like The Simpsons, but Poop Like a Champion is an actual cereal that can allegedly get your bowls moving like nothing else.

Advertised as “the ultimate colon cleansing formula” or “the number one high fiber cereal for number 2’s”, Poop Like a Champion cereal is packed full of fibers and designed specifically to help you get those bowels moving. Its creators aren’t ashamed to admit that it’s not the greatest tasting cereal money can buy, but it’s not meant to blow you away with its amazing flavor, it’s meant to help you go potty, and apparently it’s very good at doing that. According to my limited research, it’s a combination of corn bran and physllium, sorghum flour and inulin, and each 1/2 cup serving contains 16 grams of fiber, or about 64% your recommended daily allowance for an average 2,000 calorie diet.

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