Bugs may not be all that bad to eat after all, biology students at Georgia Southern University learned this week.

For a biology project, students concocted recipes using termites, crickets and other bugs and some used wild plants.

The toughest part of this semester's assignment: The students had to eat their creations, including creamy termite dip and crunchy cricket clusters.

"I wouldn't recommend it to anyone,'' said Gretchen Van Duyke, whose back-to-nature pizza was topped with termites and crickets.

The assignment helps students understand food sources around them. "They learn that a lot of wild plants and arthropods are, in fact, edible,'' their teacher Frank French said.

Many insects are good sources of protein and fats, French said. "A pound of termites has more nutrients than a pound of beef or pork.'' One student made crunchy cricket clusters by coating roasted crickets, cereal and peanuts with white chocolate. While another created creamy termite dip from termites, garlic butter, pink salmon and cream cheese.

French has eaten termites and crickets -- without cheese, chocolate or salmon.

Termites have a sweet, nutty flavour, "probably due to the natural fat in them, plus the wood contents they've been eating,'' he said. Roasted crickets "taste like a fat-laden hors d'oeuvres,'' but it's best to remove the legs and heads first.

"The legs aren't very palatable, and the heads are quite objectionable,'' French said.

*** The folks at Campbell Soup Company didn't lose their noodles, they just thought they'd stir things up for a change.

Campbell began adding 33 percent more chicken to its No. 1-selling chicken noodle soup, the first major recipe change since the soup came out 61 years ago.

Consumers in taste surveys said more chicken was the only way to make the soup better, company spokesman Kevin Lowery said.

"The overall goal is to sell more soup,'' Lowery said.

The nation's sixth-largest food company, which sells 350 million cans of chicken noodle soup a year, began rolling out the meatier soup in August.

Nationwide distribution began last month.

With the change came a return to the company's "M'm! M'm! Good'' slogan -- with a slight variation. Now Campbell says the soup is "M'm! M'm! Better.'' The New York Times reviewed the old and new chicken noodle soup today, praising the "pleasant texture'' of the noodles but adding that "neither version has much dimension or depth to it.'' It said the extra meat didn't make the soup significantly more flavourful.

"Still, if your mother serves it to you, you will probably like it.'' *** Good news for beer drinkers: A can of brew can be good for the heart -- and just as good as a glass of red wine. For years, experts have recognised the benefits of modest amounts of alcohol on the heart. Heavy guzzling is clearly harmful. But those who enjoy a drink or two a day have only about half as much heart disease as those that totally abstain from drinking.

Lately, though, red wine has gotten a lot of good press. A spate of studies and pronouncements contend that people are better off drinking red wine than other kinds of alcohol.

Wine proponents say red wine contains other good stuff that is good for the heart, such as anti-oxidant substances called flavinoids. Skeptics suggest wine's image says more about the drinking tastes -- and social class -- of the researchers than it does about the relative merits of beer, wine or liquor.

Now a study concludes it's only the alcohol that counts.

Dr. J. Michael Gaziano of Harvard Medical School outlined the findings at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association.

He looked at 340 men and women who had just suffered heart attacks and compared their drinking habits with those of a healthy comparison group.

Like other studies, this one found that a drink or two a day cut the risk in half. But it didn't matter what people drank. Wine, beer and liquor were equally effective at keeping the heart healthy.

Alcohol raises the body's levels of HDL -- high-density lipoprotein cholesterol -- the good cholesterol that keeps the arteries free of dangerous buildups.