Edible insects taste good, are nutritious and readily available. They're a popular food for more than a quarter of the world's population, mainly those living in Asia, Africa and Latin America and now there is increasing interest in insects as a source of sustainable nutrition in Western countries as well. Insects can be eaten whole or easily processed into paste, ground into flour or their protein extracted for use as an ingredient or as animal feed. In Europe, edible insects fall into the Novel Food category, Novel Food being defined as food that has not been consumed by humans in the EU to...

  There have been some useful advances in the search for a solution to the miseries of allergic reactions to our beloved pets. A recent Allergy Best Buys blog post  looked at the promising development of  a vaccine against dog allergies. And now scientists are using cutting-edge technology to make allergic reactions to cats a thing of the past. It has been known for some time that a single gene and its protein Fel D 1 are the primary cause of 90 per cent of cat allergies. Researchers have mostly focussed on ways to neutralise the effects of the protein. But scientists at...