Vegan raw food influencer dies of starvation: reports

Zhanna Samsonova is a Russian content creator based in South East Asia. (Image credit: rawveganfoodchef/Instagram)

A Russian woman who branded herself as a vegan influencer on social media has reportedly “died of starvation”. Zhanna Samsonova was 39 and based in Phuket, Thailand.

For the last four years, Samsonova ate “completely raw vegan diet”, with just “fruits, sunflower seed sprouts, fruit smoothies and juices”, her mother said, blaming her death for a “cholera-like infection”, New York Post reported, quoting Newsflash.

A friend said when she met Samsonova in Sri Lanka a few months ago, she “already looked exhausted, with swollen legs oozing lymph”.

“They sent her home to seek treatment. However, she ran away again. When I saw her in Phuket, I was horrified."

“I lived one floor above her and every day I feared finding her lifeless body in the morning. I convinced her to seek treatment, but she didn’t make it," the New York Post report quoted the friend as saying.

In an Instagram post in September last year, Samsonova said she switched to a fully fruit-based-low-fat diet, known as the 80/10/10 diet, five years ago. “My mood is better, my mind clearer, I have more energy, easier to sleep, easier to wake up, I feel more stable emotionally,” she had claimed.

Admitting that “fruitarianism” is a tough road, the content creator said the more she ate that way, the better she felt.

She regularly shared images of vegan pizzaz, burgers and pastries on social media. She also conducted online culinary classes to share recipes of her vegan dishes.

“I eating fruit at just about any time of the day and I am currently alive and well and not suffering from whatever the consequences if eating fruits for a past 5 years (sic),” she wrote on Instagram in January last year.