Karolina Krzyzak was just 19 when she began an experimental ‘fruitarian’ diet, eating nothing but raw fruits.
It was just shy of ten years later, when at 27, the Polish-native and former Leeds University student tragically died alone in a hotel room in Bali of malnutrition, after having adopted the restrictive routine.
Before she died, Karolina weighed as little as 3.5 stone and could barely hold her balance or turn over in bed. Her fingernails had turned yellow – and her teeth had begun to rot.
A new investigation by The Cut has detailed the harrowing story of how the once happy and aspirational teenager fell victim to a dangerous wellness trend, and how an eating disorder spanning more than a decade made her vulnerable to adopting life-threatening habits.
On 8 December 2024, Karolina checked into the Sumberkima Hill resort located in an idyllic, palm-tree lined destination with views overlooking the Balinese mountains.
Her booking was made last minute, with Karolina having made a reservation through WhatsApp, requesting a villa with a pool.
Hotel staff were also left with clear dietary instructions only to serve her fruit, and for meals to be delivered directly to her door.
Bernard Hudepohl, the venue’s manager, said he wasn’t surprised by the requests since it was common for visitors to request vegan meals, particularly in the green juice, yoga mat utopia that Bali was rapidly becoming.
Karolina Krzyzak was just 19 when she began an experimental ‘fruitarian’ diet, eating nothing but raw fruits (pictured)
Her entrance into the hotel, however, was a different matter. As she walked through to reception, Bernard and his staff were struck by Karolina’s frail appearance.
According to staff reports, Karolina was ’emaciated’ with sunken eyes and her collarbone protruding out of her flesh.
So fragile was Karolina that the night clerk had to escort her to her bedroom as she was unable to hold up her own weight.
Worried for her health, frantic staff members then asked Karolina if they should call a doctor but were met with a firm no.
They got the same response the following morning when they called her room to ask again if she needed medical attention.
Over the course of the next few days, Karolina scarcely left her room but was often visited by hotel staff who would deliver her packages of fruit, as per her request.
During the first couple of days of her stay, Karolina would sometimes go to the veranda to sit but soon no longer had the energy.
But her fatigue and weak state became so severe that she had to call staff to help her turn over in her bed.
Before she died, Karolina (pictured) weighed as little as 3.5 stone and could barely hold her balance or turn over in bed. Her fingernails had turned yellow and her teeth had begun to rot
On December 8, 2024, Karolina checked into the Sumberkima Hill resort located in an idyllic, palm-tree lined destination with views overlooking the Balinese mountains (Stock image)
Three days into her visit, the hotel received a message from a local resident who ran a raw-vegan café in Ubud, an area in Indonesia situated about 40 minutes away.
She’d met Karolina while travelling and knew she’d been heading to the resort, but had grown concerned after not hearing from her, and asked the hotel to check in on the young woman.
Staff then rushed to her room where they found Karolina dead in her room. According to those who found he body, she was found stiff and motionless on the floor, her skin mottled and hair grey.
According to Emilia (pseudonym), a former fruitarian and online friend of Karolina’s, at the time of her death, she had been suffering with developed osteoporosis and an albumin deficiency which lead to oedema and swelling of the feet.
Before she died, Karolina had owned a small online jewellery business and had previously attended the University of Leeds. She had been an avid ballet and modern dancer.
The Polish-native had spent nearly her entire adolescence battling anorexia and was thought to have reached 3.5 stone by the time she died.
Karolina began life in Warsaw, Poland, where she lived with her mother and father. As a young teenager, she began to suffer terribly with her body image.
When she was only 15, she wrote on Facebook in 2013: ‘Why do you cry? ‘Cause I’m fat.’
At the age of 18, she moved from her home in Warsaw to the UK to attend Leeds University where she became interested in yoga and also discovered veganism.
Writing on Instagram at the time, she said veganism had ‘opened her eyes’ to ‘so many things’, adding that she was ‘grateful’ for finding it.
Already interested in the idea of ‘clean eating’, it didn’t take long before she too was posting pictures of smoothie bowls and cinnamon dusted blueberries on her Instagram account.
She captioned a post in 2023: ‘I truly believe that you have the right answers. You know what’s good for you even if right now seems like chaos.’
Followers did not help her case. According to the publication, the thinner Karolina got, the more compliments she received, with fans commenting ‘nice neck and collarbones’ during her Instagram lives.
She began connecting with fellow vegan influencers online. One of them, Daniella Siira, who told the outlet she believed that ‘only eating fruits is the right way’ to detox the body.
The two first connected in 2017 after Karolina messaged her asking if it was possible to recover from anorexia and get her period back by eating a fruit-only diet.
After that, she began eating a fruitarian diet which instructs its followers to munch on nothing other than raw fruit, though it is not recommended by dieticians or nutritionists since it emits important nutrients like protein, fats, and omega-3s.
It’s an offshoot from the similarly controversial raw vegan diet, which tells proponents to only ingest raw wholefoods, though this does as least also extend to vegetables, nuts and seeds, and legumes.
By her second year at Leeds, Karolina had further restricted her diet to only eating raw foods and as a result, her weight plummeted. During this period, she told Daniella she was worried about death, but expressed a desire to ‘heal’.
But she was encouraged by her followers, many of whom praised her efforts, despite her visible weight-loss. ‘I truly believe that you have the right answers. You know what’s good for you even if right now seems like chaos,’ one wrote in response to a picture of her face in 2023.
Seeing her weight drop, her parents ordered her to return home where she started receiving treatment for her eating disorder again.
After spending spring of 2018 in an inpatient clinic, she immediately returned to her raw vegan diet, much against the wishes of her parents.
Living with her parents, Karolina was deeply unhappy. She made some money selling jewellery on Etsy, but without full-time work, often found herself spending hours scrolling online.
She told her friend that her family thought she was ‘brainwashed by vegans and social media’.
The more she consumed online, the more she honed her own Instagram platform, often sharing similar pictures of fruit-laden bowls.
The impact of the diet was thought to have a big effect on her body, with pictures posted on her Instagram at the time revealing her shockingly thin frame.
She even began to experience rotting teeth and yellowing fingernails as a result of the malnutrition.
A friend of Karolina’s told the publication: ‘She needed medical and psychological help, and the community often validated her behaviors instead.’
She shared some of these concerns on the Facebook page, The Healthiest Raw Vegan Diet, but was often dismissed by users who tried to blame her symptoms on other factors like dehydration.
In 2024, she left Poland and headed to Tenerife on the advice of an online friend in a bid to escape conflict with her parents in Warsaw.
Friends said she was happy with her new life and even adopted a kitten, which later died. Some told the publication that this was ‘what broke her’.
A few months later in September 2024, Krzyzak travelled to Bali with the hopes of meeting fruitarians in Ubud, a community promoting her restrictive fruit diet.
When she first arrived, she was delighted to discover endless supplies of fresh fruit and a readily available vegan community who shared her ideals.
At influencer meetups, she met a fruitarian health coach, called Graham, who told The Cut he noticed Karolina immediately due to her extremely low weight. He predicted she couldn’t have weight more than 60 pounds (4.2 stone).
A few months passed and Karolina could barely hold her balance and had to walk slowly to avoid bumping into things.
Despite nudges from friends and rapidly deteriorating health, she refused to seek medical attention.
Graham said Karolina approached him on a number of occasions seeking help for her illness, but was insistent that any kind of treatment would need to incorporate a raw vegan diet.
The article, which spoke to a number of Karolina’s friends, expressed their struggles with ‘guilt’.
Daniella, who originally initially invited her into the community, has now stopped her vegan diet. She said she struggled to overcome her own eating disorder while trying to stick with it.
Karolina had long dreamed of going to Bali. Her friends remembered her talking about moving there to escape the bleak world she saw for herself in Warsaw.
Inspired by digital nomad and wellness influencers online, she had become fixated that she could break free from the confines of the 9-5 and mundane Western life.
‘I’ve been watching all these travel vlogs dreaming one day it would be me there — happy, talking, sharing, laughing, confident, strong, with ma soul fam,’ she wrote in a text to a friend before she died, the publication heard.
Inhabiting the wellness space online exposed her to a plethora of ‘clean eating’ rhetoric, with dozens of influencers promoting their vegan diets against a backdrop of sandy beaches and washboard abs.
Having battled an eating disorder and other mental issues, Karolina was a prime target.
If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s health, you can contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, on 0808 801 0677 or beateatingdisorders.org.uk
