While some people in the world do not have enough to eat, others with plenty sometimes engage in habits that are not only unhealthy, but could easily be described as gluttonous. Some people make the worst habits their regular diet, and others only occasionally binge on or partake in the most ridiculous things. Below are ten people who took eating to the next level—so to speak.

Abuse: A woman has almost nothing but Red Bull for months.

A New Zealand woman had some extra weight after a pregnancy and really wanted to shed those pounds quickly, so she did what any reasonable person would do, she started consuming almost exclusively Red Bull. She drank it mostly to suppress her appetite, but of course it also gave her energy without her needing to eat food. While the diet is very bad for her and has given her health problems, including a stroke, she did manage to lose a lot of weight very quickly. Apparently she really didn’t mean to consciously go on the diet, it just kind of happened.

Abuse: A girl decides to eat only carrots in an attempt to turn orange.

A girl wanted to win an argument with her roommates: she believed that eating lots of carrots could give you Carotenemia, and her roommates disagreed with her. She wanted to prove to her roommates that you don’t have to get a fake tan to look like an Oompa Loompa, you can just eat lots of carrots. So she went on a diet of only carrots and carrot juice. This diet is extremely bad for you, the orange skin itself is not thought to be harmful, and does eventually go away, but you will be throwing the nutrients in your system way out of balance.

Abuse: Nothing but beer and water for Lent.

An Iowan decided to try something totally new for Lent, and that new plan was to drink only beer and water for the entire period. The man brews his own beer at home and is fascinated by a group of Bavarian monks who had a beer they called “liquid bread.” Supposedly they would drink it during Lent because they were not allowed food. The man claimed he was trying to make a point about the history that booze has with Christianity, but more likely he just found a really good excuse to drink a lot all through Lent. Undoubtedly he spent the majority of the fasting period half comatose.

Abuse: Woman drinks ten liters of coke a day.

After an autopsy a coroner in New Zealand pronounced that a woman’s death was mainly due to her drinking roughly 10 liters of Coca Cola a day. Her friends also said that she smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, and hardly ate. While it may be somewhat amusing that Coca Cola is trying to deny that their product had anything to do with it, they may just be trying to avoid a lawsuit. And we can hardly blame them, lawsuits are popular these days and you cannot really blame this on Coca Cola—the real culprit here is a lack of self control and a family that did not get the woman the help she needed.

Abuse: Twinkie Diet.

A man wanted to prove that there aren’t really good or bad calories, at least when it comes to weight loss, so he devised a totally sane plan to get to the bottom of the question. He ate nothing but Twinkies and the occasional Doritos, Oreos and cereal. However, he kept the actual caloric content really low. It turns out that his theory held up, and he did lose weight. Unfortunately for him, however, just because you lose weight eating nothing but junk food doesn’t mean it isn’t bad for you. The key takeaway here should be that if you want to lose weight, you need to eat fewer carbohydrates and move more, not that you should binge on Twinkies.

Abuse: A girl in the UK eats almost nothing but chocolate.

A girl in the UK eats almost nothing but chocolate, ever. Her parents try to excuse it by saying that she simply “has a food phobia”. While supposedly she is currently in good health, it seems very unlikely that good health will continue if a habit of almost nothing but chocolate continues long term. They say she “eats 15 squares of cooking chocolate and 10 chocolate fingers every morning”. It seems she also eats the same thing for lunch and will occasionally have rice krispies for dinner, but not unless they are completely slathered in melted chocolate. The only other thing she occasionally eats is the occasional small bag of Wotsists.

Abuse: Mother allows daughter to eat almost nothing but Chicken McNuggets for 15 years.

Stacey from the UK had to be admitted to the hospital after collapsing at work. It turned out that she has trouble breathing, Anemia and other issues, most likely due to her diet. You see, when she was young she tasted chicken nuggets, and—being spoiled—refused to eat anything else. Her mother made a few halfhearted attempts to get her daughter to eat something else, but gave up. Her daughter is approaching adulthood and has hardly ever eaten anything besides chicken nuggets. Although the doctors say that if she keeps up this diet, it is going to kill her very young, Stacey refuses to give up the diet, she just doesn’t feel she can eat anything else.

Abuse: Parents nearly kill child with Vegan Diet.

A pair of parents in Queens nearly killed their infant, through negligence. And by negligence, we mean that they refused to breast feed it or give it any milk or dairy products. In fact, all they allowed the baby were fruits, veggies and legumes. In other words, they had already turned their infant child into a vegan. They consider “Veganism”, to be like a religion to them. The two parents were sentenced to five to twenty five years, because the judge felt that they should simply have understood that a baby is too young for a vegan diet and needs better nutrition.

Abuse: Man has liposuction, uses the fat to fry meatballs for his friends.

An artist known for shock art had a liposuction operation recently. As an artistic statement he used the body fat to make meatballs and served them to his friends. He felt that because it was art it wasn’t actually cannibalism. But this is not Evaristti’s first ridiculous attempt to get attention. He has also dyed an iceberg with red paint and challenged people to press blend when he had live fish in a blender. We can’t help but feel that he might do better in a room with four padded walls.

Abuse: Dutch TV personalities eat each other’s flesh on air.

Two Dutch TV show hosts were struggling to come up with something that would make people pay attention to them, and after much soul searching decided that the best way would be to eat each other. They had a surgeon remove parts of buttocks and stomach. They then had a chef cook their own flesh and serve it to them complete with side dishes. While many people have claimed that it was a hoax, the hosts insist that it was indeed completely real, and even show people the scars to prove it. It isn’t completely unsurprising for these two, either. Previously, the same network dealt with controversy over a program where people who were sick competed to see which one would win a lifesaving organ.

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In recent days, the dodgy human rights record of international football (soccer) has been dragged into the limelight, including serious concerns about the upcoming World Cups in Russia and Qatar. But human rights abuses in sport aren’t as rare as you’d think—and soccer isn’t the only sport with a problem.

10The Rumble In The Jungle

The Rumble in the Jungle is one of the greatest sporting events of all time, featuring an unstoppable Muhammad Ali in a triumphant knockout victory over his rival, George Foreman. In fact, the fight is so legendary that people tend to forget that the whole thing took place under the auspices of one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators: Mobutu Sese Seko. Zaire’s kleptomaniac ruler was so eager to stage the fight that he even put up a $10 million purse. The money was all stolen from the people of Zaire, but Mobutu was a close US ally and reporters covering the fight “did not ask many questions.”

To make sure the event went swimmingly, the story goes, Mobutu even had all the known pickpockets and criminals of Kinshasa executed. Meanwhile, conflict raged elsewhere in the country and the fight took place with armed soldiers looking on. Even the stadium where the fight took place had been used as a makeshift prison camp/torture chamber, and it was rumored that they had to scrub it clean of blood before the fight.

In the end, Mobutu’s attempt to use the fight to drum up good publicity for Zaire didn’t go quite as he’d hoped. Reportedly, his officials were infuriated by Ali’s televised boast that: “All you boys who don’t take me seriously, who think Foreman is going to whup me; when you get to Africa Mobutu’s people are going to put you in a pot, cook you, and eat you.”

9The 1968 Summer Olympics

In 1968, Mexico City was abuzz with preparations for the 1968 Summer Olympic Games. But beneath the surface, all was not well. Young Mexicans were fed up with poverty, corruption, and a repressive government. The decision to spend $150 million on the Olympics brought things to a head and protests soon broke out, mostly calling for the repeal of laws allowing the arrest of anyone who attended a meeting of more than two people. On October 2, just 10 days before the Olympics were due to start, 10,000 students gathered in Tlatelolco Square, chanting “We Don’t Want Olympics, We Want A Revolution!”

The government response was immediate and brutal. The military surrounded the square and opened fire, while armored cars rumbled into the mass of students. A subsequent cover-up means the exact death toll remains uncertain, but it’s clear that it was a slaughter, with as many as 300 deaths. Hundreds more were rounded up, imprisoned, and tortured in the aftermath. At the time, the military insisted they had only fired after being shot at from the crowd, but this is now considered unlikely.

Despite the bloodbath occurring just across town, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declined to move or postpone the games, noting that the violence wasn’t aimed at the Olympics themselves. As IOC head Avery Brundage had earlier explained: “If our Games are to be stopped every time the politicians violate the laws of humanity, there will never be any international contests.” Brundage, nicknamed “Slavery Avery” for his known racist views, wasn’t quite so sanguine when Tommy Smith and John Carlos famously gave the Black Power salute on the podium later on in the games, threatening to ban the entire US team if they weren’t sent home immediately.

8Equatorial Guinea’s African Cups Of Nations

Under the brutal rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records on the planet, with opponents of the regime regularly tortured and murdered. An oil boom has theoretically made the country rich—GDP per capita is around $25,900—yet the vast majority of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The rest of the money is stolen by the ruling family and their cronies. Obiang’s son is estimated to have bought at least $3.2 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia alone. He also recently considered buying a yacht for $380 million, almost three times Equatorial Guinea’s yearly health and education budgets.

Some of the money also went to co-hosting the 2012 African Cup of Nations, one of the most prestigious tournaments in world football. To prepare for the tournament, the regime spent millions of dollars building and refurbishing stadiums (the exact cost was not released). It also cracked down even further on civil liberties and openly harassed foreign reporters who tried to cover anything other than the tournament itself.

Amazingly, Equatorial Guinea was chosen to host the tournament again in 2015, after Morocco pulled out at the last minute due to Ebola concerns. (Although the Equatoguinean team was technically banned from football for cheating at the time, this was politely overlooked.) This required spending tens of millions building two further stadiums. It also apparently required arresting opposition activists. Despite the growing condemnation of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, there has been little international outrage about holding the Cup of Nations in a country with an even worse record on human rights.

7The 1982 African Cup Of Nations

Of course, the Cup of Nations does have something of a track record when it comes to letting monstrous dictatorships host. Take the 1982 tournament, which was held in Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya, already a something of a regional pariah for its military intervention in Chad. Ironically, Gadhafi hated football and had even closed the Libyan league down from 1979–1982. (In one version of the story, the dictator became insanely jealous after seeing the names of popular footballers written on a wall in Tripoli.) He agreed to host the 1982 Cup to further his diplomatic goals but still insisted on opening the tournament with the stirring words: “All you stupid spectators, have your stupid game.”

Sadly, not everyone in Gadhafi’s family felt the same way. His son Al-Saadi actually loved football so much he decided to become a professional player. He wasn’t talented enough, but you don’t need talent when you’re a rich maniac with your dad’s army to back you up. Soon Al-Saadi was the star striker in a Libyan league so heavily rigged in his favor that announcers were forbidden from saying the names of any other players. If a team tried to protest the obvious cheating, they would be forced to keep playing at gunpoint. Al-Saadi’s glittering career only took a nose-dive when he leveraged Libya’s oil money to engineer a hilariously corrupt move to the Italian top division, where he played for less than half an hour over three years, failed a drug test, and was voted the league’s worst player ever. He is currently on trial in Libya for murdering a rival footballer.

6The 33rd Chess Olympiad

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, loved chess. He loved it so much he built a gleaming multimillion-dollar facility known as Chess City and inaugurated it with the 33rd Chess Olympiad in 1998. (Shown above is the official mascot of the event.) How impoverished Kalmykia could afford this isn’t clear, and a local journalist named Larisa Yudina was stabbed to death shortly after opening an investigation into the matter. Local activists were beaten for protesting the expense, with one leader briefly thrown into a mental hospital and then forced to flee Kalmykia.

None of this was allowed to put a dampener on the tournament, with over 1,000 top international chess players ignoring calls for a boycott to enjoy the luxurious hospitality and the offer of a thoroughbred Kalmyk horse for every winner. The luxury came at a price, with Ilyumzhinov reportedly diverting child welfare money to finish Chess City in time. Kalmykia’s crumbling highways were ignored in order to pave the roads leading to the venue, which ordinary Kalmyks were banned from driving on.

Meanwhile, every Kalmyk organization had to sponsor a team, which effectively meant emptying government buildings to furnish the players’ quarters. Experiences varied: “The Statistics Committee got Peru. The apartment had been used by the construction workers, and it was a huge job fixing it up. As for the local publishing house, they got Tajikistan, and they were happy. The Tajiks weren’t used to much comfort, and it was easy to take care of them.” Ilyumzhinov is still president of the World Chess Federation and is best known for his belief in aliens and his bizarre attempts to bring peace to conflict zones through the medium of chess.

5The 1978 World Cup

After a military coup in 1976, Argentina was ruled by a brutal right-wing junta which murdered thousands of opponents during the so-called “Dirty War” that followed. Argentineans suspected of left-wing leanings were regularly kidnapped, tortured, and thrown out of planes into the ocean. But that didn’t stop FIFA from allowing Argentina to host the 1978 World Cup, giving the junta a valuable shot at some good publicity.

They seized it with both hands, hiring a pricy PR agency and even building special walls so that visitors wouldn’t be able to see the impoverished slums of Buenos Aires. In the buildup to the tournament, any remaining dissidents and potential troublemakers were kidnapped or murdered. Even the tournament’s head organizer, General Omar Actis, was assassinated, allegedly for opposing the government’s wild spending.

The tournament itself was not a classic, with the junta widely alleged to have rigged games—35,000 tons of grain and $50 million in credit supposedly got them a 6–0 win over Peru. Despite the junta’s crimes, only one player, West German hero Paul Breitner, declined to play on moral grounds. As Argentina’s star striker, Leopoldo Luque, put it years later: “With what I know now, I can’t say I’m proud of my victory.”

4Dennis Rodman’s All-Stars

At this stage, there’s almost no point in listing the monstrous crimes of the North Korean government. The state has become a such a byword for drab cruelty and oppression that it’s easy to forget just how genuinely nauseating life there can be. At least, that’s the charitable interpretation of former NBA star Dennis Rodman’s actions. Rodman, who is on the record with his belief that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is “an awesome guy,” has made several trips to North Korea and actually organized a team of retired NBA stars to play a game there as a “birthday present” for Kim.

Needless to say, the game attracted a fair amount of controversy. The NBA distanced itself, arguing that while “sports in many instances can be helpful in bridging cultural divides, this is not one of them.” Meanwhile, Congressman Eliot Engel pleaded for the “bizarre and grotesque” tour to be called off. For his part, Rodman apparently had no worries about organizing a PR stunt for the dictatorship, explaining: “I’m not a president, I’m not a politician, I’m not an ambassador. I’m just an athlete and the reason for me to go is to bring peace to the world, that’s it.” The North Koreans apparently won the game. Peace has yet to break out.

3The Rebel Tour Of South Africa

By the early 1980s, South African cricket was in a crisis of its own making. Under apartheid, the country’s cricket team had long refused to play against non-white teams. In 1969, England’s attempt to field a non-white player, Basil d’Oliveira, caused such a dispute that the whole tour had to be abandoned. Meanwhile, opponents of apartheid called for a sporting boycott of the brutal regime. In 1970, South Africa was officially banned from international cricket. As their beloved team stagnated without quality opponents, the South Africans changed their tune, desperately trying to lure anyone who was willing to play them. An unlicensed English team toured in 1982, followed by a “rebel” Sri Lankan squad a year later.

Over in the Caribbean, things couldn’t have been more different. The West Indies were unquestionably the best team in the world, partnering devastating fast bowlers like Joel Garner and Michael Holding with such formidable batsmen as Desmond Haynes, Gordon Greenidge, and the sublime Viv Richards. The world had never seen such a combination of pace, power, and talent. In fact, the West Indies team was so good that many world-class players never even made it onto the team. To make matters worse, there was little money in cricket in those days, and many players struggled to make a living in the off-season. When the South Africans began offering players $120,000 for a single tour, many found it hard to resist.

In 1983, 18 West Indian cricketers agreed to a tour of South Africa. Many were players frustrated by their inability to break into the West Indian first team, but the squad included such big-name players as fast-bowler Colin Croft, wicketkeeper Alvin Kallicharran, and 1979 World Cup hero Collis King. All were given “honorary white” status for the duration of the tour. It was a decision they would regret for the rest of their lives.

Although the rebel cricketers insisted that their tour had helped break down racial barriers, all 18 immediately became pariahs in the Caribbean. West Indians were outraged that their cricketing heroes would collaborate with apartheid South Africa for money. The entire team was banned for life (the ban was eventually lifted in 1989) and most never played cricket at a high level again. Shunned wherever they went, most of the rebels had to leave the region and at least three had major mental breakdowns. Richard Austin, one of the most versatile players of his generation, currently begs on the streets of Kingston. The West Indies team continued to dominate world cricket until the 1990s, by which time apartheid had ended and South Africa had rejoined the cricketing world.

2The 2015 European Games

This week, the inaugural European Games will be hosted in Azerbaijan. The multi-sport event, including swimming, gymnastics, and athletics, will essentially be a mini-Olympics, along the line of the older Asian Games. It should be a wonderful event, with just one hitch—Azerbaijan is a deeply repressive crypto-dictatorship, ranked 126 in the world for corruption and 162 for press freedoms. Another report estimates that Azerbaijan is the fifth-worst country in the world when it comes to censorship.

As you’d expect, the buildup to the games, which will cost Azerbaijan over $1 billion (the full cost hasn’t been revealed, but the stadium alone is at least $600 million), has been marred by widespread repression. More than 40 people have been arrested for investigating corruption surrounding the games, while an activist who called for a boycott is now facing up to 12 years in prison on obviously faked charges. The day before the tournament started, critical media outlets like The Guardian and Radio France International were told they would not be allowed to enter Azerbaijan. As Amnesty International put it: “Azerbaijan wants to have these games in a criticism-free zone. It has already wiped out everybody who is critical of the government inside the country, and now it’s a closed-down state for international human rights groups as well.”

1The 2022 Qatar World Cup

The recent arrests and scandal surrounding FIFA, while no surprise to anyone familiar with the organization, have helped focus global attention on the growing scandal of the 2022 World Cup, which, for reasons that remain unclear, was awarded to the tiny and immensely wealthy nation of Qatar.

While this raised some obvious logistical problems (the tournament will likely have to be played during the winter to avoid blistering heat) the real issue surrounds the treatment of the migrant workers building the World Cup’s infrastructure. In 2013, Qatar had a population of two million, of which just 10 percent were actually citizens of Qatar. Most of the rest were migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent. Lured by the promise of higher wages, the unfortunate workers find themselves effectively bound to one employer, forbidden to change jobs or even leave the country without their boss’s permission. They also can’t unionize. It should already be clear why this system of indentured servitude might be open to abuse.

Not only are many workers forced to live in cramped, unsanitary conditions, but an investigation by The Guardian recently turned up a suspiciously high rate of death by “cardiac arrest” among Nepalese construction workers—likely the result of heatstroke caused by working long hours in the desert. Meanwhile, Qatar has actually detained human rights researchers investigating the situation. The additional publicity means some progress has been made, but there’s still a long way to go before conditions for Qatar’s migrant workers are anywhere near acceptable.