Zhanna Samsonova is a 39-year-old vegan influencer and a Russian national who lived only off of raw vegan food for years. She starved herself to death. According to New York Post, she frequently advocated raw foods on her social media pages.

The woman, who used the online alias Zhanna D’Art, reportedly passed away on July 21 after finally seeking medical attention while on tour in Southeast Asia.
According to Samsonova’s Instagram post, she had been vegan and only consumed raw foods for the past at least ten years.

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One friend recalled to Newsflash that “a few months ago, in Sri Lanka, she already looked exhausted, with swollen legs oozing lymph.” She was returned home to receive care. But she took off again. I was frightened when I first saw her in Phuket.
“I lived one floor above her and every day I feared finding her dead body in the morning,” her pal continued. Although I persuaded her to get help, she didn’t survive.
Samsonova’s mother said that her daughter passed away from a “cholera-like infection.” The official cause of death, however, was not made public. Her mother informed Vechernyaya Kazan that she thought Samsonova had passed away due to tiredness and the strain an exclusively vegan diet had put on her body.

The influencer had only consumed the large, sweet jackfruit and the durian, a spiky, mace-like fruit famed for its custardy meat and foul odor, for the previous seven years, a close friend told the New York Post.

Detailing her stringent diet plan in one of her posts, Samsonova had exclaimed with joy, “I feel my body and mind transform every day. I never revert to my old behaviors because I adore the new version of myself”.
She promoted the raw diet on social media, saying: “I eat basic food while having a lot of experience as a raw food chef. I enjoy developing my own dishes and motivating others to eat well”.

According to the medical health website Healthline, there are drawbacks to a raw food diet, particularly when it is not well thought out. While this diet can have many health benefits, including weight loss, improved heart health, and a lower risk of diabetes, there are also drawbacks.

These include vitamin D and calcium deficiency, both of which are necessary for healthy bones. Additionally, this may result in insufficient B12 levels, which, rather paradoxically, can cause heart disease, anemia, harm to the neurological system, and infertility.