Professor Nigel Slater of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University, is one of the team which has developed a cheese that he says looks, tastes and smells just like normal cheddar cheese, but contains a special natural ingredient which stops harmful cholesterol from getting into the body.

The product is called "A Healthy Alternative to Cheese" and has been introduced by Tesco's now to coincide with everyone's New Year's resolutions to eat more healthily after the Christmas over indulgence.

The cheese is made from milk which has had all of its dairy fat removed and replaced with a vegetable oil which is naturally high in plant sterols. These plant sterols act to block off special receptor sites, preventing cholesterol from getting into the blood stream. Tests suggest the cheese alternative can cut cholesterol by as much as 20% in just three weeks.

Professor Slater's work at Cambridge focuses on Bio-products manufacturing and functional, bio-mimetic materials and his work is related to the Bioscience engineering research theme.