breatharian
n. A person who attempts to get all their nutritional needs from the air.
Etymology
Examples
1998
'Breatharians' emulate ascetic saints who 'got all the nutrition they needed from the air,' Rhio explains. 'I've met some people who are trying to be doing it. They're doing it occasionally, but they're not at 100 per cent. Yet.'
—“'Live' food devotees shun cooking,” The Toronto Star, January 28, 1998
1984
A novelist who used to earn his daily bread by the sweat of his marijuana-dealing has now found that he no longer needs to earn his bread. Bread is unnecessary. He has become a breatharian, living on air.
—Herbert Gold, “There are normal outpatients, and then there are writers,” The New York Times, December 30, 1984
1979 (earliest)
Blume chose the most rigorous of the group's dietary options and began subsisting almost entirely on the juice of raw wheat grass. He told his friends he wanted to become a 'breatharian,' a holy man who could live on air alone.
—The Associated Press, October 14, October 14, 1979