“WAITER, waiter, I’ve got a cricket in my salad!”

But that proved no reason for a panel of distinguished diners to return their plates at a unique taste test at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History on Sunday.

Former Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers fried up bugs for food critics, celebrities and leading scientists, to show that insects can be tasty, nutritious, and help save the planet.

She argues that with rainforests cut down for cattle ranches and meat production generating huge amounts of carbon dioxide, eating protein-rich silkworms, ants and grasshoppers could prove a greener alternative.

The treats on offer included locusts dipped in chocolate and salsa in grasshopper sauce.

Martha Kearney, who presents Radio 4’s World At One, said she would resist appearing on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here after sitting through the food-tasting.

She said: “When they are dead, it is all right, but the idea of them wriggling as they go down is horrible. The neat grasshoppers were disgusting, but the taco with ground grasshopper sauce was delicious.”

University of Oxford zoologist Prof Fritz Vollrath, who admits to eating spiders, said silkworms could provide a sustainable alternative to beef.

He said: “Silkworms have been bred to be a very efficient protein manufacturing system for silk. Before the silk is spun, you can eat them.

“They do not produce methane so one of the important greenhouse gases is not there.”

People would be less squeamish about eating bugs “if they were powdered and reconstituted within a McWormburger”, he said.

Prof Vollrath added: “The various insects all taste a little bit similar, which is to do with their shells when they are fried. It is a little bit like shrimp shell.”

The Government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, said he had eaten live termites growing up in South Africa to impress girls.

He said: “The reality is we will not be able to produce beef to meet the capacity of what could soon be nine billion people in the way we have got used to in the last 50 years.”