Alina Chernoivanova wrote:
http://www.newsru.com/russia/10dec2004/mks3.html)

Spaceba for the link. The BBC had run the story about astronauts having to go
on a diet because of lack of food (with no further details).

This article puts everything into perspective:

Progress was delayed by a month. As a result, crews are eating from reserves.
So if progress doesn't launch before end of December, the crews may run out of
food. It also mentions that the previous progress, food was sacrificed to make
room for Elektron spare parts, so that didn't help the situation with regards
to having a delayed Progress this time around.

So the question now becomes: how come this progress is a month late ? had ATV
launched on time in fall of 2004, would a progress still have been launched
while ATV was attached ? If not, then I can see production scheduling problems
with Russia having to change its production schedule to spew out a progress in
fall 2004 instead of later.