IT may sound like something from TV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, but two students are entirely serious about convincing the world to make insects part of their everyday diet.

Sam Shuttleworth and Finlay Milner say far from the unbearable ordeal portrayed in the Bushtucker Trials, scoffing spiders and munching mites is good for your health and good for the planet.

And the Durham University second year engineering students are taking their Student Grub campaign on the road, hoping to win over school pupils, fellow students and office workers alike – and bag themselves a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Amazon.

The Student Grub project has already reached the finals of energy giant npower’s Future Leaders enterprise competition, which offers the rainforest trip to the winning entry, which will be announced in December.

Among the dishes the 19-year-olds have been cooking up are chocolate-covered crickets, banana, walnut and mealworm cake and grasshopper kebabs.

“We were thinking about an environment project to do and I thought: ‘My dad always said eating insects would save the world’,” Sam said.

Insects need little land to be “farmed”, can thrive in tight cages, require little feeding and produce low amounts of greenhouses gases, while also being high in protein and vitamins.

Entomophagy, the consumption of insects as food, may be frowned upon in the West but is common in parts of South and Central America, Africa, Asia and Australasia.

“A lot of people are surprised by how nice they taste,” Sam said.

“People often scrunch up their faces at the prospect, but then find they like it.”

The classmates have already visited Joseph Swan Academy in Gateshead, plan to show off their cooking at npower’s offices near Houghton-le-Spring and hope to host events on Durham University’s science site and in Durham city centre.

To make the perfect chocolate-covered cricket, roast the insects for 20 minutes, cover in melted cooking chocolate and refrigerate.

For banana, walnut and mealworm cake, mix mashed banana, walnuts, mealworms, caster sugar, flour, baking powder and eggs and bake for 40 minutes.

Finally, for grasshopper kebabs, marinate the grasshoppers in lemon juice, basil, pepper, Dijon mustard and honey and skewer along with roasted pepper and onion.

The insects are bought to order online, having been “farmed” in insecticide-free conditions.