PULL up a chair; you'll need to be sitting down when you hear the latest. Apparently, food tastes nicer when you're hungry.

Shockingly enough, scientists have discovered that burgers, chocolate and chips go down better if you've skipped a meal than if you're no more than peckish.

The research, daringly exposed by experts at Malawi University, hinged on starving 16 undergraduates of breakfast, then giving them sugar, salt or quinine solutions and asking them to identify the tastes.

Funnily enough, they all did really well.

Such findings are hardly likely to be challenged in my house, but I should add that hunger's not the only thing that regularly sets our tastebuds tingling. Boredom will do the trick just as well.

When hungry, we at Clee Mansions are most likely to salivate over the prospect of a stunning Thai banquet.

By contrast, our ability to taste things more acutely when bored does not necessarily coincide with discriminating palates.

A wet Sunday afternoon could see several rounds of buttered toast and jam (210 cal each) begin their journey to a new life on my hips, possibly accompanied by a hunk of blue cheese (180 cal but scary amounts of fat). Or it could be Branston Pickle on those ancient cheese biscuits still kicking around after Christmas, maybe followed by the last of the festive After Eights (all random excess calories).

All I can say in my own defence is that I'm not the one who favours cold leftover curry in buttered white bread sandwiches. However, I have stood by and watched it happen.

If hunger and boredom make us graze, you can imagine what happens when we are suffering from both. So why, then, do we always go shopping on an empty stomach?

Sunday morning dawns, we're out of milk again and the cats are shooting us dirty looks because they're sick of dry biscuits. Clearly, an urgent trip to Sainsbury's beckons. We've generally no sooner fought our way past the greeters and the vast piles of Sunday Times magazines than the trouble starts.

Knobbly vegetables I'm not sure how to cook, three-for-two offers, assorted dented tins... somehow they all end up in the mid-sized trolley I so optimistically chose outside the supermarket.

Meanwhile, my partner in crime has left me far behind in his urgent quest for crunchy, salty things with no nutritional value.

These items get sneakily tucked behind the massive sack of spuds which I've identified as a cracking investment, despite the fact that I have no cupboard big enough in which to store it. The potatoes will end up green, sprouting and weighing down our wheelie bin six days before the next collection's due, but hey, they are undoubtedly a bargain, and they're a carbs-laden hedge against starvation.

What we really need is a police station such as the one just installed at Tesco's in Rainham, Essex.

Shoppers there can pop by and report a crime when they nip in for a packet of teabags - which could be a cheap alternative in North Yorkshire if we ever have to use the 0898 numbers recently proposed by our enterprising police service.

If they opened up shop in Monk's Cross, the police could run a lucrative sideline in stopping shoppers such as us from breaching food decency regulations.

I for one would consider it a public service if a burly copper headed me off at the pass as I reached for those cream horns teetering on the edge of their sell-by dates.

I mean, I don't even like cream horns, but officer, just look at that price reduction...

Updated: 10:05 Wednesday, February 25, 2004