This may also explain the reluctance of poor, ill-fed people to spend extra money on food, preferring instead to buy such things as televisions or a fancy wedding.

ECONOMIST: Poverty and food

Binyam Mohamed's allegation that British agents fed questions to his interrogators who ill-treated him in Morocco and elsewhere is under investigation.

BBC: MI5 'does not collude in torture'

Dr Fed decided that the patient was more seriously ill than we'd thought.

BBC: IMF economy warnings: Time to panic?

He is on hunger strike and wants to be allowed to die, but is being force fed because he is considered to be mentally ill.

BBC: New date set for Moors Murderer Ian Brady's tribunal

Women are known to have a higher incidence of the condition - and this has fed into the idea that high heels or ill-fitting fashionable shoes are to blame.

BBC: Bunions - family not footwear to blame

The 38-year-old spent years caring for her seriously ill daughter Emily, 10, who was born with heart problems and had to be fed through a tube in her stomach.

BBC: North East Olympic torchbearing hopefuls receive offers

""These prejudicial comments followed twenty days, at least, of constant, strident, partial, often ill-informed interventions by AMs of all opposition parties, including their leaderships, against Awema which fed into, and legitimated, an unremitting negative media.

BBC: Following the money - and wincing