At a London soirée next month, waiters will only be flagged down if diners fail to find a fly in their soup.

That’s because every diner at the table will have paid £50 (about $75) to tuck into a meal that includes insect canapés and other courses featuring multi-legged, winged and bug-eyed creatures at the Pestival festival.

Hosted by chef researchers from the Nordic Food Lab, a Noma-led gastronomic research center, the dinner will attempt to do what UN scientists have been trying to do for the past few years: convince squeamish Western palates that insects are a healthy, protein-packed meat alternative which could help meet the world’s growing food demand.

Noma restaurant in Copenhagen has topped Restaurant magazine’s list of World’s 50 Best Restaurants for the last three years.

“We hope to show the diversity of deliciousness, by exploring insects as undervalued yet striking ingredients in the Nordic kitchen and beyond,” reads the event description.

'Insect street snacks'

While the practice of eating insects, or entomophagy, may be unsettling for Western palates, different species of beetles, ants, bees, grasshoppers and crickets are eaten in 29 countries across Asia, 23 countries in the Americas, and 36 countries in Africa.

In Thailand alone, 200 different insect species are consumed and are commonly sold as street snacks throughout the country.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, some insects contain twice the protein of raw meat and fish, while others, particularly in their larval stage, are also rich in fat, vitamins and minerals.

The Nordic Food Lab’s dinner party isn’t the first to make insects the theme ingredient for a meal.

Brazilian chef Alex Atala uses insects at his award-winning São Paulo restaurant D.O.M., where he serves Amazonian ants on top of pineapple.

Atala describes the ants as tasting like ginger and lemongrass.

Exploring the Deliciousness of Insects will be held Tuesday, April 30 and Wednesday, May 1 at 7:30 pm.

For more info, visit http://bit.ly/ZFBqDK.