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On a recent afternoon, a few workers could be found bustling around the storefront, preparing items like the dehydrated zucchini fries and Amazon smoothies that conform to Dr. Jubb's touted Lifefood diet, a refined version of the popular raw food diet. The shelves were stocked with supplements and nectars. A local woman gravely asked Dr. Jubb's opinion of tomatoes. "It's taken years of evolution to get to this place," Dr. Jubb said of his extremist opinions about the role of food in life. "I recommend someone first become a Lifefoodarian. Then move toward liquidarian, then to breatharian. Since 1995, I've basically practiced a very austere form of 'going without.' " Then he headed across the street to his apartment, a single room with a rug, a desk, many plants and gurgling electric water fountains. At casual glance, the kitchen appeared empty. "I used to live off potatoes and bread," he said. "I was a starchaholic." Born and raised on the Furneaux islands off the coast of Tasmania, Dr. Jubb came to New York in 1980 and received his doctorate in physiology at New York University. It was then that he began to think differently about health and the body. To illustrate his growing realizations, he wrote the word "EAT" in black marker on a piece of paper. Pausing for dramatic effect, he then added a D at the beginning of the word and an H at the end. Dr. Jubb, who speaks in arcane terms about life forces, energies and enzymes, does not look like someone who, as he claims, has eaten very little for almost a decade. Rosy-cheeked and fit at 170 pounds, he is a scuba diver, wilderness hiker and yoga practitioner. He is also quick to admit that he is something of an on-and-off breatharian. He further explains that the practice does not involving eating nothing all the time, but rather very little most of the time. "I've had tea nearly every day, and a bit of honey," he said. "And I absolutely live off my own urine." The practice of drinking one's own urine is a medicinal therapy popular in China and elsewhere, cited as a panacea for toxicity and disease. Talk about life forces aside, Dr. Jubb's claims would seem to be impossible by medical standards. "This is total and utter nonsense," said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University. "There are some things that defy science, but this isn't one of them. People require a certain amount of calories per day in order to breathe, keep the heart beating, keep muscles toned and active, keep the brain functioning - the basic housekeeping functions of the body. Urine does not have very many calories in it. If he's not losing weight, he's cheating." Still, some of Dr. Jubb's worshipful followers said that for many years they never saw him eat. His current capitulation to minimal amounts of food, he said, has been simply to comfort his new girlfriend, a younger blonde who listened smilingly as he described his routine. The woman is from Nebraska, and Dr. Jubb met her at a sweat lodge ceremony. "We call her Arctic Fox," he said by way of introduction, "but her real name is Jennifer." In fact, thanks in part to her presence in his life, for the past six months he has been eating small amounts of raw food, because she still eats food and he wants her to be comfortable around him. Breatharianism, a marginal New Age movement that some have traced to the practices of Tibetan monks and Indian holy men, has also been labeled a hoax and a cult. For example, Wiley Brooks, the founder of the Breatharian Institute of America, claimed not to have eaten for 19 years when news reports emerged in the 1980's that he had been spotted surreptitiously eating a chicken pie. Another breatharian guru, an Australian woman who goes by the name of Jasmuheen, claims to have tens of thousands of followers, three of whom have died, allegedly when following her theories about extreme fasting. Dr. Jubb maintains a considerably smaller sphere of influence. He promotes his ideas via public-access television, frequent speeches at holistic health fairs, and books like "Secrets of an Alkaline Body" and the forthcoming "Jubb's Cell Rejuvenation." And he frankly admits that even breatharians have their bad days. "I'm normal," he said. "When I have broken down over the years, what I always like to have," he confided, learning forward in his chair, "is a piece of cheesecake." Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/nyregion/thecity/06brea.html |