QuestionQUESTION: Can someone live on a liquid diet for the rest of their life, if they drink meal replacement drinks like Slim Fast, Carnation Breakfast Essentials, Ensure, Boost or Special K protein shakes?
ANSWER: Dear Chris,
I love this question. Because it could possibly inform you of healthy eating in one simple answer:
Yes, some people can live on a liquid diet for a very long time (some have not died, yet, after 20 or so years), but I seriously doubt that this could work for any of the brands you name.
The clue is this: liquid or not, food is food, calories are calories, nutrients are nutrients, but none of the above equate a diet. To live off a liquid diet for any period of time extending a couple of months, either takes a very expensive scientific programme (like for the terminally ill, or astronauts)or a highly spiritual plan. Let me go into this.
In principle,in a modern context, a diet is a regimen tailored to a single person that suits a life-style. This style SHOULD be underpinned by an INNATE attitude and ultmate life-motivation (which is informed by soul). This is little understood, so you get some wonky outcomes with this premise.
From a holistic perspective it is easy to say that some diets will be unhealthy, because your soul is in need of some sort of healing. The diet, in effect, reflects a mal-alignment. It becomes a disharmonious picture true to reality. This healing may take a life-time, a life-phase, or even a whole generation (smoking used to be considered beneficial, for decades, and I was raised on additatives in the 70s as symbols of progress).
Some people choose to be very diet conscious. This remains a luxury, and we remain fairly uninformed about the meaning of this freedom of choice. There are "moral" group, or tribal diets, based on religious traditions or scriptures. But there are also very many individual paths, nowadays. The emphasis will vary with the motivation: you have diets for weight loss, or for fitness, recuperation, or for spiritual goals, etc. Most of us (world wide) just eat what we can get our hands on or what we are served (be it one extreme or the other: either poverty-rations, or fast food). Only a tiny percentage has the privilige of choice. If you do have the financial means and knowledge for such choice: why choose off the shelf for a pre-packaged, commercial tin?
In matters of diet you can distinguish physical motivations (hunger, or cravings/desires) from soulful ones (bio-dynamic, Ayurvedic, vegetarian etc. choices). They sometimes compete valiantly with eachother! It really is not a simple situation.
Of course, seriously or terminally ill people can survive on intravenous (liquid) food for a very long time. As do Astronauts on their nutritional powders, pills or whatyummacallits. But forever? I doubt it, .... - because I believe other solutions are more interesting! We eat to live.
We need to look at nutrition in a very holistic way. This means we need to encorporate body, mind, soul, and spirit into the whole story. But, also, or even MORE SO: the four-fold story (physical, etheric, astral, I) of each living being, and even the minerals, World, and Cosmos..... then it gets truly complicated and freak incidents become less interesting. Probably, somebody can, or will in the future, survive on Slim Fast alone....But don't ask me to probe too deeply into their state of soul: it makes for a messy task.
Life on earth is sacred. This can be felt, experienced, and thus truly known by just observing the miracles around us. (Science proves it to us.)But so much of it is becoming debased.
We can partake of the miracles of Nature and the Cosmos by the act of eating. We do it so often, daily, repeatedly. It can become a kind of worship and invite a new kind of grace. In any case, it can develop a new sense of self. Eating from a tin or packet cannot do this. At best it fuels you. Over a longer course of time it runs you down. You will find teabags, these days, with labels on them with a little adage or spiritual message: they know that to make their highly processed product special again, they need to add "human" nutrients (love, or care).
The only reason we eat is to learn to love. This is not so easy to understand. We don't need to eat really: we can tell the body to not feel hungry. But by the same token some hungry people die awful deaths. Communication with the body and from the body is complex.
On one level the body is very mechanical, and this is how modern nutrition calculates our "needs". It has robbed us of many relationships or interactions with nature and other people (growing, reaping, preparing food and enjoying meals etc).
On the other hand the body is very malleable and we can do amazing things with it (all sorts of acrobatic-gymnastics or survival feats) and there is even a way around eating the nutrients we need by supplementing with vitamins/minerals and other chemical delusions. But does "artificial" food make us fully human? We may lose a kind of purity and naturalness that is hard to define nowadays. I am not saying we will always eat the same way we do now (off the land) but the transition needs to make highly motivated sense. It remains a complex issue, when we move away from standard "healthy" models (with scientific underpinning). But we can identify ab-natural tendencies (to not use the word unnatural, for even chemicals are natural to an extent!). We can do this in a negative sense (processed foods) but also, on a highly spiritual level. This does not simplify the holistic story, however (often people think they can save their souls by eating lots of sprouts and kale). Never forget, spirits belong in Heaven.... What do we humans in the middle (of heaven and hell) have to do?
Eating is so much more than just getting all the nutrients down: it is social, traditional, it is a bridging of heaven and earth, but most importantly, a bridgind of one's inner and outer worlds: unique to each individual, but sharing many things in common universally.
Eating is meant to aid our understanding of ourself. We can manage without probably. Just like we could send letters to the other side of the world by trade ship in the 16th century, it's different now with Internet. We need to place noursishing ourselves into a much more functional context: but then first redefine function, please!!
The purpose of life is to learn that you are a spiritual being. By exploring your physical self you get some clues. By eating you bump into all sorts of issues (through joys and aches, pains, and plain food poisoning! Not to mention long-term health issues.) All the modern food allergies are trying to highlight this. Are you your body? Yes, you are. And more!
People who eat healthy, vegetarian, or totally natural may find themselves with Cancer at 40. How can this be? We need to look at each case individually. That is why you need dieticians, experts. Your diet paints a picture of who you are, and by changing it you can change your soul.
You, the eater, and That which wants to be eaten are interrelated. Preditor-Prey is the simplest example of such a natural relationship. Humans are ready for more complex relationships. Hooray! Only sad, that we feel chemical compounds, sums of building blocks, calorie counts, make for greater complexities. Really, we can analyse the world till the cows come home, and we will be hungrier than ever for it!
There are compelling examples of people who eat nothing at all. They do help us think about all this and create a new perspective. They are called (we call them) Breatharians or Inedians (sometimes they eat Light). This goes back to the old Indian tradition of living of Prana (etheric energy). Yogis were said to be able to do this. Nobody much believes this now. But there are those who just do this, and one or two I have researched in depth, and as far as science can make out, they really do not eat or drink (very little). But what makes some instances compelling is the motivation behind such a "diet"; it is never so simple as plucking a packet of Carnation off the shelf. Indeed, it goes right against such lack of choice (delusion of choice). They tend to experience the pain of misunderstanding the point of our whole nutritional system (not just there to process food, but CAPABLE of doing so in order that YOU might realise who you REALLY ARE).
The people I mean have deep, soulful prompts to eat what they eat (or, generally,not); many similar cases start off as vegans, then progress to fructarians and then go onto being liquidarians. But this is often a lot of Ego talking. How healthy this is has yet to be proven. Even if physically these folks are doing well, can we guarantee their spiritual development? We cannot judge this, but we can keep this in mind to bounce off our own intuitions, which vary per person. Karma varies per person!
How not eating can work, can only be understood in two ways: either it is fraudulent, be it scientifically speaking, or in my eyes worse: spiritually speaking. Either they eat more than they think, or really are on a power-trip. Some cases have been "unmasked". Otherwise, I do believe, there are subtle spiritual dimensions science cannot yet properly explain (not yet interested - no commercial value).
Under such cases I would file: Jericho Sunfire, or Michael Werner, or Judith von Halle: the latter two have Anthroposophic leanings, which is controversial within the Movement; the first mentioned is unrelated to any movement but not like most other (in)famous cases, if you ask me. You could check such names out to see how "it can be done". You don't need to convince yourself, but may it provoke some thoughts on what healthy eating really entails.
On a more modified level, there are many myths about the kind of nutrients we need. Some say fibre, some say hydrate, some say this and others that. Many despair to hear such discrepancies and reach for a simple tin of something. It may be a valid protest in some way, yet! But not on a large scale.
It may be interesting for you to read a (somewhat over-the-top in places) site like http://www.gutsense.org just for a little different take on what we think we need. Some of these ideas can lead on to more holistic ideas (few do, but I challenge you to make your own mind up).
The thing is: my heart says just living off a commercially exploitative liquid diet cannot work for long. It is so incredibly dead. If you would eat it as a Yogi, it would not kill you, perhaps, just challenge you further, but for the commoner it cannot help reach the heart.
I believe the manufacturers will also warn you quite frankly not to follow such a diet for too long. They may not know why they issue such warnings, technically but they have some common gut sense, I guess. Slimming products have their place: even if only as cruel wake up calls, many years after you tried them. It is never about one product or even a set of nutrients, ultimately. It's about life. Your life.
Feel free to follow up on this question if you had more specific issues in mind. I am fascinated by it.
Love, Evelyn.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Is there a liquid diet that someone can live on for life? If so, what is it?
AnswerDear Chris,
I do not understand your question very well. I gave you all the information I have on liquid diets. Your question does not tie into any of my points. I already indicated you could try living on as little as water all your life, if you so believed this to be right for you. Science will prove whether it is possible. If you survive (like the examples I gave you)so be it proven, as per year.
If you are curious about long-term nourishment programs on liquid diets as they are promoted for slimming, you would be wise to contact some companies which sell the product. I am sure they will advise you, like I have that, none of their products are meant to be taken over an extended period of time. They are likely to make you seriously ill. To find out how long somebody can live off intravenous hospital food you would have to ask a nurse or a hospital dietician. There could be instances of life-times, where normal digestion is impededed; what they put in it I don't know, but it will be a very balanced (and expensive) cocktail.
I am now curious what you actually are trying to research. You may be in the wrong Expert Category with your question.
Good luck with your inquiries,
Evelyn
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