Could fasting give us fresh insight into ourselves?

FOR reasons I still don't quite understand, I found myself this week on a 24-hour fast.

- Peter Mortimer

I note with some irony that it is called a 'fast,' though the hours themselves pass incredibly slowly as the hunger begins to take hold.

For several hours it is all a bit of a novelty, but the novelty begins to wear off by about hour seven. By hour twelve, my stomach felt empty and all manner of food fantasies were conjured in my imagination.

I began seeing in a new light those brave souls who for various causes went on hunger strike, days, weeks, even months on end. And I thought of those millions of people on our planet who are not so much 'fasting' and yet for whom hunger is an unwanted way of life, day after day week after week.

Like me, you'll have seen the images, hundreds of starving children thrusting up their empty bowls in the desperate hope that the aid workers, dishing out the limited supplies of food, will choose to pour some rice or grain their way. And the great irony is the fact that the nearer to starvation they get, the more grotesquely swollen the children's poor bellies become.