Leanne Ratcliffe facts for kids

Leanne Ratcliffe (Freelee the Bananagirl) is an Australian YouTube personality, vegan activist, speaker, and author. She is the creator of the YouTube channel Freelee The BananaGirl, where she talks about her diet, exercise and lifestyle. Her channel accumulated over 790 thousand subscribers and 330 million views.

Ratcliffe started her channel to keep a record of her progress and to spread awareness about her diet techniques. In one video, she recalls some of her previous career path choices. She was a bartender, a snack vendor at a movie theater, a receptionist and for some time she also worked at McDonald's. She gained online popularity in 2014 after promoting a controversial "extreme" vegan diet. In 2017, Ratcliffe moved to the jungle of Northern Queensland where she lives "off grid" with her partner, though some outlets mistakenly stated that she had moved to a South American jungle.

Popularity

Ratcliffe calls her diet "frugivorous," though this is a zoological term for species which thrive on a diet consisting mostly of fruit. Her dietary practices are more accurately described as "fruititarian, although she also includes starchy and non-vegetables, and small quantities of nuts and seeds ." Ratcliffe counters arguments against a high carbohydrate diet with examples of and references to the eating habits of the longest surviving Asian cultures. She maintains that a low fat and low salt diet is the key to effectively extracting nutrition from any kind of diet. She has been featured in publications such as Men's Fitness, Huffington Post, Daily Mail and News.com.au. Her YouTube channel is popular with around 780K+ subscribers and over 330 million views. She is also active on other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where she has amassed a significant following.

Nickname

Freelee the Banana Girl draws her nickname from a combination of the word "Freedom," her first name, "Leanne," and her fruit of choice, bananas.

Books

Ratcliffe has advertised her own self-published e-books outlining her diet principles under the titles, ‘Raw Till 4 Diet’, ‘Go Fruit Yourself’ and ‘My Naked Lunchbox’. These books were met with the criticism that following her plans could lead to disordered eating, and nutritional deficiency, and that the diets are unbalanced and incredibly restrictive.