Fake News: Man Did NOT Lose 200 Pounds in Six Months by Drinking Menstrual Blood

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Man Did NOT Lose 200 Pounds in Six Months by Drinking Menstrual Blood

Did a Milwaukee, Wisconsin man named Martin Sanders lose 200 pounds by drinking menstrual blood? No, that's not true: the story about the bizarre and disgusting weight loss method was invented by a Canadian website that creates stories about weird crimes, bizarre sex acts and other strange events but purely for entertainment purposes. The entire thing was made up, it is not real.

The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on November 22, 2018 titled "Man lost 200 pounds in six month by drinking menstrual blood" (archived here) which opened:

A man who began drinking his wife's menstrual blood in an effort to lose weight has lost over 225 pounds in six months thanks to his unusual diet.
38-year old Martin Sanders from Milwaukee in Wisconsin, weighted over 400-lbs a few months ago when he decided to try a new diet of his own design.

Martin Sanders lost an incredible 225-lbs in six months thanks to his blood drinking diet.

He began ingesting by ingesting small quantities of blood collected from his wife as part of a high-protein diet.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so some people might have thought it was a real news article:

Man lost 200 pounds in six month by drinking menstrual blood

A man who began drinking his wife's menstrual blood in an effort to lose weight has lost over 225 pounds in six months thanks to his unusual diet. 38-year old Martin Sanders from Milwaukee in Wisconsin, weighted over 400-lbs a few months ago when he decided to try a new diet of his own design.

The picture that illustrated the story was real though, but it showed Zach Moore, a man from Florida who lost 295 pounds after gastric bypass surgery and drastic changes to his diet and habits (and not by drinking menstrual blood, to be clear):

Morbidly obese man drops 21 STONE in 18 months: 'I didn't want my son visiting my grave'

CATERS Zach Moore weighed in at 33st and had an unhealthy BMI of 60 before making his miraculous transformation. The dad-of-one would happily down at least two litres of Coca-Cola and puff on three packs of cigarettes every day.

The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:

World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.

It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.

Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.

We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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