We have all heard about the grasshopper who didn't store his food for winter, but how about the one that was eaten by a vegetarian after falling asleep in spinach?

Putney massage therapist Lynsey Saunders was happily tucking into her home-made spinach pasta, made with totally organic ingredients from Waitrose in Putney, when she found a crunchy surprise.

She said: "I thought nothing of it, as all my food is prepared from scratch, and being a vegetarian I know there could not possibly be any nasties in my food. I presumed it must have been an uncracked peppercorn, or a bit of uncooked pasta?"

But a few forkfuls later, she saw something which wasn't spinach, wasn't pasta and certainly wasn't an uncracked peppercorn it was a dead grasshopper.

She said: "A few mouthfuls later I picked up something else on my fork that at first I could not identify. I looked a little closer and to my horror it was a dead grasshopper."

Lynsey, 28, Treville Street, Putney, has been a vegetarian since she was 16 and in that time has not eaten any meat and hardly any fish.

She says she was "distraught" to imagine she had eaten the dead grasshopper's mate before discovering the one on her plate and claims the grasshopper was in the organic spinach. She said: "On these television programmes like I'm a Celebrity... they eat things like grasshoppers, but I am not a celebrity and I wasn't told I would be eating it."

Lynsey is asking Waitrose for some form of compensation for the insect in her spinach.

A Waitrose spokeswoman said: "This is an isolated incident. We are committed to the highest standards of quality and customer service and are taking steps to compensate the customer for her concern and upset."