But there was something else too, a disappointment that caused far more pain than my distended stomach.

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Coeliac disease is often diagnosed in childhood, and can be characterised by a distended stomach and stunted growth.

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After the contest, his belly grossly distended, Mr Kobayashi was asked what next.

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Aid donors shake their heads at the sight of slightly glassy-eyed Yemeni men whiling away each afternoon, their cheeks distended with tennis-ball-sized gobs of masticated leaves.

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Public health expert Agus Zulkarnain reckons as many as 41, 000 babies in the province are suffering from marasmus - a condition caused by calorie and protein deficiency, typically producing gaunt features and distended bellies.

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Gisma joined a bedraggled crowd slumped on the dry earth outside a straw hut where South Sudanese officials registered each new arrival and weighed the younger children - some with distended bellies and painfully thin limbs.

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The characters are shrill, cartoon-like figures, and the bubblegum text is so distended with italics, capital letters, lists, diagrams, poor jokes and faux parables that you end up wanting to stick it to the underside of your chair and leave it there.

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In the company of Emma McCune, misguided though she might have seemed to some, Ms Scroggins takes the reader by the hand into the hot dust of southern Sudan and the politics of the belly, where black meets white, rich meets poor and the fat white paunch of the West gets to look upon starving Africa's distended stomach.

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