Extreme fasting of Angus Barbieri, who refused food for a whole year (6 photos)

Everyone has heard about long-term fasting. Many even have experience having mastered two weeks of fasting in one day. But seriously, giving up food for a long period of time is an event that requires a lot of willpower from a person. Fasting is not only difficult, but also dangerous to your health. Therefore, doctors often monitor the process.

Motivated volunteer





Angus Barbieri, who went down in history as the record holder for voluntary fasting, also acted under the supervision of specialists. His experiment could have ended sadly, but Angus did it, losing 125 kg in 382 days.

In 1965, studies related to fasting were conducted at Maryfield Hospital in the Scottish city of Dundee. Scientists put advertisements in newspapers saying they needed obese people in relatively good health. Typort resident Angus Barbieri responded to one of them. At 27 years old, the guy weighed 207 kg, which made it difficult for him to do physical work and even walk.

The young man met the requirements and was recruited to participate in the experiment. It was planned that Barbieri would go without food for a couple of weeks, drinking only special drinks with amino acids and water. After the research was completed, Angus suddenly asked the doctors not to interrupt the experiment. He told them that he dreams of weighing 80-85 kg and is ready to do anything to achieve his goal.

Scientists decided to continue the experiment with fasting, however, outside the walls of the Maryfield Clinic. Angus Barbieri was sent home, and the doctors themselves came to monitor his condition. Realizing that abstaining from food would not be easy, the guy quit his job at his father's fish store. He minimized communication with the outside world and focused on his goal.

How did the record fast happen?



Even a big guy like Barbieri couldn't go completely without nutrients. Therefore, Barbieri's diet included vitamins, electrolytes, small amounts of yeast (a source of essential amino acids) and zero-calorie drinks such as tea, coffee and mineral water. Sometimes, as an exception, Angus allowed himself the luxury of drinking a glass of milk or water with sugar.

Angus Barbieri's fast lasted 382 days and ended on July 11, 1966. He fulfilled his dream and lost weight from 207 to 82 kg. The man lost 125 kg of excess weight and maintained his ideal weight for many years. For a long time, only a narrow circle of specialists knew about the bold experiment. But in 1973, the scientific journal Postgraduate Medical Journal published a large material about Barbieri and his fasting.

It turned out that Angus accomplished a real feat. His job was not simply to abstain from food. Every day, Barbieri was tortured with measurements and tests that told doctors about the processes in the man’s body. Collecting daily urine, testing blood from a vein, studying carbon metabolism, measuring heart rate and blood pressure, checking the reactions of the nervous system - for all this, the test subject had almost no free time.

Results of the experiment and hate





At the end of the experiment, scientists stated that no negative changes had occurred in Angus’s body. During the first few months, Barbieri felt so energetic that he sometimes came to his father’s store to help unload goods. However, later he stopped appearing there. The guy explained this as a fear of breaking out and eating some of the food on the counter.



As one might expect, there were many who accused the authors of the study and Barbieri of deception. These people, among whom there were many luminaries of medicine, argued that a person could not live without food for more than a year. There were also those who considered Angus a cunning beast who ate secretly from the doctors. These options were excluded, since Barbieri regularly had biochemical blood tests taken by specialists from an independent laboratory. Any reaction of the body associated with receiving food would be immediately recorded.



Angus Barbieri died in 1990 at the age of 51. The cause of his death is unknown, but there is information that it is not related to excess weight. The man had been watching his figure for many years and only gained a little weight in the last years of his life. Until now, Barbieri’s experiment is considered a classic of fasting and the spice is studiedsheets from different countries of the world.