'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.'

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.

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.