But people, being people, have a hunger for lists and prizes that quantify merit.
Detainees had to skip at least nine consecutive meals to be added to the hunger strike list in the first place.
"We will not make assumptions for the increase or reduction of detainees on the hunger strike list; however, we will continue to provide the appropriate level of care to each detainee," he wrote.
As of Friday, 100 detainees remain on the hunger strike list, with 23 being fed a can of Ensure or another nutritional drink at least twice a day through a tube snaked down the nose.
The detainees would not be removed from the hunger strike list unless they continued to eat solid food and averaged a certain number of calories over a period of several days.
WASHINGTON -- Nearly all of the 102 Guantanamo detainees currently on the military's hunger strike list have eaten a meal within the past day, a Defense Department official said Friday.
Additionally, the senior medical officer at Guantanamo can remove a detainee from the hunger strike list "based on medical assessment that the caloric intake is sufficient for survival and it is suspected that the detainee's intent is not to hunger strike," House said.
Finally: it may appear on every 'so-you-read-Hunger-Games' list, but it is for good reason.
In neighbouring Washington state, with demographics nearly identical to Oregon's and a ranking of second on the hungry-states list, hunger is hardly mentioned as a widespread problem.
The worst in memory came in 1984, when a crop failure led to a food and forage shortfall that made headlines the next year, and briefly put African hunger atop the list of global priorities.
