The death of Russian influencer Zhanna Samsonova, who followed a strict diet of rare fruits, could be due to a cholera-like infection. This is how her mother explained it to the medium 116RU.com, although we still have to wait for the autopsy to confirm the causes. It is believed that the malnutrition suffered by the content creator - she ate fruits, sunflower seed sprouts, smoothies and juices, and had not drunk water for about six years - could have aggravated her condition.
After making this information known, social networks have been filled with comments from food experts who ask not to blame vegan and vegetarian diets for what happened. One of them has been the vegan dietitian-nutritionist Aitor Sánchez, who has addressed his Twitter followers like this: "It goes without saying that if a vegan person dies from not eating or drinking water, it is not a matter of veganism, but the fault of these crazy things".
Food technologist Miguel Ángel Lurueña is another of the experts who has insisted that no one dies because they are vegan. "The problem is following an inadequate and insufficient diet. If you only eat fruit, you can die. And if you only eat ribeye, too." The nutritionist Pablo Zumaquero has also emphasized how harmful diets based on a single food group can be. "You will surely die, because you end up having severe and prolonged nutritional deficits," he warned.
People who follow these plans, also known as monotrophic diets, do so because it is often erroneously claimed online that they can help achieve ideal health and body image. These regimes began to become popular years ago: in Japan, around the 70s, the apple diet appeared, which in theory detoxified the body, and at that time the lemon, grapefruit or egg diets also appeared. All of them have a myriad of negative health effects.
These diets have in common that they are very little varied, and the intake of calories and nutrients is limited. There is little empirical evidence, says this article, "but science has repeatedly shown that they can cause malnutrition, anemia, osteoporosis, nutrient toxicity and muscle catabolism (destruction).
The vegan diet, on the other hand, can be a good option. These days it has received a barrage of criticism, but nutrition experts point out that (as long as it is well planned) it can be followed without problem. Lurueña explains that to do so "it is key to take vitamin B12 supplements and plan your diet well, so that it provides the necessary nutrients in the amounts that our body needs." In any case, it is best to go and always be advised by a dietitian-nutritionist.
The nutritionist Julio Basulto highlighted other benefits of this plan just a few days ago on Twitter: "The vegan diet, well planned, is healthy and is more respectful of the environment and animal welfare." But Basulto recalls that the "vegan" claim is widely used in the food industry to sell more unhealthy food.
